2013 poetry moment: Reading The Big Smoke with Collegiate Black Men

Easily another one of my best poetry moments occurred this past fall. One of the classes I teach is composed of all first-year black men. We read various poems, but we really focused in on Adrian Matejka's The Big Smoke.

I've been reading "bad man" poems with guys at the university for a few years now, but this fall, The Big Smoke gave us one of the ultimate bad men in Jack Johnson. Here, we had a volume of poems, most of which were presented from the first-person perspective of the heavyweight champion himself.

We didn't have to start from scratch with the book either. All the guys arrived to the class with knowledge about cool, problematic, confident, athletic, troubled, boastful, accomplished, and complex black men. So the students all had thoughts on men like Jack Johnson even before knowing much about him or reading The Big Smoke. 

There were moments too when we felt that the "Shadow" who appeared to chastise Johnson was also speaking truths to us. On a few different occasions during the semester, guys in our group were on the receiving end of racist verbal assaults. So we lingered on the Shadow's observation that "you can't buy equality." As a black man, even if you change clothes, make multiple achievements, and display a refined sense of culture, you still "can't change your skin."  Jack Johnson's Shadow was talking to ""Mr. Champion of the Negro World," but for a moment, it felt like he was directing those comments at us.

Talking about Matejka's volume of poetry often turned into conversations about sports, history, coolness, education, domestic abuse, money, cars, making a come up, eloquence, and rap. For those and other reasons, covering the The Big Smoke with those first-year fellas was a notable poetry moment in 2013.  

Related:
• Good book moments in 2013
• A Notebook on Adrian Matejka 

Repeatedly anthologized poems by black poets

What follows are poems that have been repeatedly reprinted in anthologies over the decades. For now, I am only including poems that I have confirmed appear in more than 20 different anthologies. I will keep counting and updating the list. 


• "Black Art" by Amiri Baraka
• "A Poem for Black Hearts" by Amiri Baraka
• "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note" by Amiri Baraka
• "kitchenette building" by Gwendolyn Brooks
• "a song in the front yard" by Gwendolyn Brooks
• "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks
• "Heritage" by Countee Cullen
• "Yet Do I Marvel" by Countee Cullen
• "Incident" by Countee Cullen 
• "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar
• "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar
• "Nikki-Rosa" by Nikki Giovanni
• "Middle Passage" by Robert Hayden
• "Frederick Douglass" by Robert Hayden
• "Runagate Runagate" by Robert Hayden
• "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" By Langston Hughes
• "Dreams" by Langston Hughes
• "I, Too" by Langston Hughes
• "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes
• "O Black and Unknown Bards" by James Weldon Johnson
• "If We Must Die" by Claude McKay
• "Georgia Dusk" by Jean Toomer
• "Song of the Son" by Jean Toomer
• "For My People" by Margaret Walker
• "On Being Brought From Africa to America" by Phillis Wheatley

Related:
 • 100 Poems read & re-read in 2012 
 • 100-plus Poems I Read & Re-Read (online) in 2011

Good book moments in 2013

A list of some the good book moments from 2013

• Reading The Big Smoke with Collegiate Black Men 
• Meeting 'the oracle' Ben McFall
• Courtney Thorsson's Women's Work
• Reginald Harris's Autogeography (twice)
• The year in African American poetry, 2013

Meeting 'the oracle' Ben McFall was a notable book moment of 2013

Meeting the oracle at the Strand

Looking back on the past year, I have to say that one of the most notable book moments for me was meeting Ben McFall, a long-time book clerk at the Strand Bookstore. I've visited the Strand about once every year since about 1998. Somehow, I never formally met Mr. McFall.

Then in January, a story appeared in The Times identifying Mr. McFall as "the oracle of the Strand Book Store." I enjoyed reading the piece, and was surprised I hadn't met him before. I committed myself to introducing myself when I visited in May.

Mr. McFall has been working at the Strand for more than 35 years now. He knows the bookstore and especially the fiction section like the back of his hand. His knowledge of all those titles and authors is why the journalist for The Times referred to him as the oracle.

When I met him, we had a really good chat about books and authors and his experiences in New York. I stopped by to talk to him again in June on a return trip to the city and Strand. When I visit NYC and the Strand in 2014, I'll be sure to look him up.

Meeting the oracle was one of the notable moments for me in 2013.

Related:
• Good book moments in 2013
• Meeting Ben McFall at the Strand (again)
• Meeting Ben McFall at the Strand  

Courtney Thorsson's Women's Work: a good book in 2013

This year, I tried, well, I started trying to commit myself to getting much more writing done on my new major project on contemporary writers. Doing so meant I was deliberately cutting back on purchasing and reading new books, you know, so I could catch up on everything else. Ah, but then, I couldn't resist picking up Courtney Thorsson's Women's Work: Nationalism and Contemporary African American Women's Novels (2013). 

Thorsson's book is about "the reclamation and revision of African American cultural nationalism as everyday and extraordinary women's work to fashion self and community" (178). She concentrates on works by Toni Cade Bambara, Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, and Paule Marshall. In addition to providing useful interpretation gs of select works by those writers, Thorsson offers important literary histories of American, African American, and black women's writing.

Women's Work also recovers black cultural nationalism in contemporary scholarly discourse. These days, in the academy, it's rare to even hear discussions of cultural nationalism, but of course out here beyond the scholarly realms, we're surrounded by expressions of a black nationalist ethos. I mean, what is "Black Twitter" about? Or, why do the people view QueenBey and Olivia Pope or all those rappers and NBA players as so inspirational? Somewhere in all of that, cultural nationalism is at play, or at work, as Thorsson might say.

My first big project focused on 1960s and 1970s work, and now my next project is concentrating on 21st century writing, So I found Thorsson's work especially helpful for giving me a sense of the shape of things in black literature and literary studies between the mid-1970s through the 1990s.

Anyway, all of this is to say that Courtney Thorsson's Women's Work was one of the books I'm glad I came across in 2013.  

Related:
• Good book moments in 2013
• A Notebook on work by Courtney Thorsson

Good 2013 poetry moments: Reginald Harris's Autogeography (twice)

There's always so much happening with poetry, and I always...always feel like I'm too far behind, constantly playing catch up. Through all the interactions with students and the reading and the blogging, I have these really cool and good standout book and poetry moments. Over the next few days, I'll try to mention a few.

One of those moments happened some months ago. I purchased Reginald Harris's volume Autogeography (2013) at some point during the summer and started reading it.I enjoyed Autogeography so much that I back-tracked and purchased and then read Harris's 10 Tongues: Poems (2002).

I'm apparently not tapped into the right channels, because I don't hear enough about upcoming volumes by black poets. But Harris's book was the winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, which meant it did receive some pre-publication publicity. The book was published in April, and I felt late when I purchased it in early June.

Autogreography, I noted in my blogging plans, was one of the books I would write a couple of entries about during the fall semester. Before I did, the "moment" happened. At some point in August, Harris, whom I had never met, mailed me a copy of his book Autogegraphy. What an honor!

I was pleased to receive yet another copy of Autogeography, which now meant I had a reading copy for home and one that I could and did share with students during one of my browsing sessions on contemporary African American poetry. It's not everyday that I receive mail from poets, and certainly it's even rarer to receive a poet's volume of poetry. So the series of events that led me to adding two copies of Autogeography (and 10 Tongues) to my collection represented one of the good, unexpected poetry moments of 2013.

Related
• Good book moments in 2013
• Reginald Harris, Autogeography, and playing across the page
• 12 Years Earlier: From Reginald Harris's Autogeography to 10 Tongues   

Rita Dove and the rise of novel-like, character-driven volumes of poetry

Was it Rita Dove who prompted a couple of now prevalent practices among African American poets? Was it because Dove's Thomas and Beulah (1986) won the Pulitzer in 1987 that large numbers of "new" poets were encouraged to start producing novel-like volumes of poetry and volumes featuring clearly defined central characters? 

The focus on a key character in black poetry, at least in the modern era, became more apparent with the publication of Elizabeth Alexander's The Venus Hottentot (1990). She memorably gave voice to a previously silenced, oppressed black woman, and her poem would serve as an important touchstone for poets for years to come.  

Certainly, Kevin Young's first volume Most Way Home, which was a National Poetry Series winner in 1993, was influenced by Dove's book. Young's book, which concentrated on presenting aspects of his older relatives and ancestors in the South, seemed to have drawn inspiration from Dove's volume that focused, in part, on presenting the lives of her grandparents.

Then there's Natasha Trethewey. Her first-volume Domestic Work, which presented glimpses of families, was selected by Dove as the first winner of the Cave Canem Poetry prize. Trethewey's second volume Bellocq's Ophelia (2002), based on E.J. Bellocq's photographs of prostitutes, was an even more tightly focused narrative with lead characters.

Cornelius Eady presented a narrative of sorts and definitely a central protagonist in his volume Brutal Imagination (2001) based on the fictive black man whom Susan Smith claimed kidnapped her children.  Marilyn Nelson presented a history in verse of George Washington Carver's life in her volume Carver (2001).

There are really a large number of books that fit this pattern of featuring novel-like plots and/or central characters have appeared in subsequent years. For instance, there's A. Van Jordan M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A  (2004) about the first African American finalist in the National Spelling Bee Competition; Quraysh A. Lansana's They Shall Run (2004) about Harriet Tubman; and Thylias Moss's Slave Moth (2004) about a fictive enslaved woman.

Frank X. Walker wrote Buffalo Dance (2004) and When Winter Come (2008), the first and second parts of histories in verse about York, an enslaved man who traveled on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Walker also wrote  Issac Murphy I Dedicate This Ride (2010) about a legendary African American jockey as well as Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers (2013) about the civil rights worker.

We have Tyehimba Jess's Leadbelly (2005) about the folk musician; Elizabeth Alexander and Marilyn Nelson's Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color (2007) about a teacher and her students striving for education during during the 1830s;  and Patricia Smith's Blood Dazzler (2008) about Hurricane Katrina. Young's volume Ardency (2012) focused on the Amistad and this past year, we had Adrian Matejka's volume The Big Smoke about the first black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson.

There's obviously considerable distance between Matejka's The Big Smoke and Dove's Thomas and Beulah, but those works are linked by a long line of novel-like and character-drive volumes.  

Sonnet Sequences and Contemporary African American Poetry

[An annotated version of this entry appears on Poetry Genius.]

Several prominent, award-winning African American poets have produced extended sonnet sequences over the course of the last several years. The sonnets cover a common topic and are often linked by interconnected lines combining to form what is known  as a crown of sonnets.
 
Sonnet sequences represent intricate series of poetic projects composed by poets, and those projects often demonstrate the abilities of writers to design elaborate networks of poems. Crowns of sonnets suggest that writing poetry is more than simply quick bursts of creativity. Instead, a series of interrelated, 14-line poems seem to be the result of planning and patience, extended study, and laborious attention to detail.             

The appearance of sonnet sequences reflects aspects of a larger shift in the publishing history of African American poetry. For decades, black poets gained attention for signature, often short poems such as "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar, and "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes. Those poems circulated widely in part because anthologies were a primary means of circulating poems and assisting in making poets well known among diverse audiences. 
 
In recent decades, however, awards and contests in  literary culture became increasingly important. Thus, the visibility and worth of poets is often associated with the accolades assigned to award-winning volumes of poetry as opposed to individual poems. As extensive set pieces within volumes, sonnet sequences can showcase the literary and technical skills of poets and thus elevate the chances of their books receiving notice and winning awards. 

Of course, poets are not taking the time and energy to design sonnet sequences as attempts just to win awards. The design and composition of these highly structured series of interconnected poems present artistic challenges that poets might find fulfilling to pursue.

What follows are a list of volumes containing sonnet sequences.  

1997 - Marilyn Nelson's The Fields of Praise (a series of 7 sonnets, entitled "Thus Far by Faith")
2005 - Tyehimba Jess's leadbelly 
2005 - Marilyn Nelson's A Wreath for Emmett Till (a crown of 15 sonnets)
2006 - Vievee Francis's Blue-Tail Fly (a crown of 7 sonnets)
2007 - Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard (a crown of 10 sonnets) 
2007 - Elizabeth Alexander's & Marilyn Nelson's Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color (sequence of 24 sonnets)
2010 - Allison Joseph's My Father's Kites (includes 34 sonnets)
2010- Tyehimba Jess's "Sonnet Crown for Blind Tom" (7 sonnets) 
2010 - John Murillo's Up Jump the Boogie (a crown of 7 sonnets) 
2011 - Nikky Finney's Head Off & Split: Poems (sequence of 19 sonnets)
2012 - Patricia Smith's Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (crown of 15 sonnets)
2013 - A. Van Jordan’s The Cineaste (a crown of 44 sonnets)
2014 - Marilyn Nelson's How I Discovered Poetry (50 sonnets)
2016 - Tyehimba Jess's Olio

 

Public Thinking Events, Fall 2013

This past fall semester we hosted 5 "Public Thinking Events" -- activities that allow large numbers of people at the university to come together each month to share ideas about pertinent topics. What follows are a few photographs from the events. The Public Thinking Events are an extension of our Haley reading projects. 

September 17, 2013

September 17, 2013

September 17, 2013

The year in African American poetry, 2013

News, activities, and publishing items related to African American poetry that caught my attention this past year.  

• January: History and Other Poems by Brenda Marie Osbey is published. 

• February: Frank X Walker named Kentucky Poet Laureate.

• February: Angles of ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry edited by Charles Rowell is published.

• February: The Collected Poems of Ai is published.
 
• April: Collected Poems by Robert Hayden is re-published. 

• April: Loose Change by James E. Cherry is published.

• April: Silverchest: Poems by Carl Phillips is published.

• April: The Cineaste: Poems by A. Van Jordan is published.

• April: Autogeography by Reginald Harris is published.

• May:  The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka is published.

• May: Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers by Frank X. Walker is published.  

• May: Dear Hero, by Jason McCall is published. 

• May: Amiri Baraka's "A Post-Racial Anthology?" - a critique of Rowell's Angles of Ascent appears in Poetry magazine

• June: Poetry Genius launches.  

• June: Eugene B. Redmond's Arkansippi Memwars is published by Third World Press.

• June: Sterling Plumpp's Home/Bass: Poems is published by Third World Press.

• July 14 - August 3: “Don’t Deny My Voice: Reading and Teaching African American Poetry,” NEH Institute held at the University of Kansas.

• September: Harmony Holiday and Phillip B. Williams are recipients of 2013 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowships. 

• September 21: Kofi Awoonor killed in attack on a mall in Nairobi, Kenya.  

• September 28: James Emanuel dies.

• October: She Has a Name by Kamilah Aisha Moon is published.

• October: Ishion Hutchinson and Rowan Ricardo Phillips receive Whiting Awards.

• October (25 - 26): "Celebrating Contemporary African American Literature: U.S. and Afro-Caribbean Poetry" conference held at Pennsylvania State University.   

• November: Adrian Matejka's The Big Smoke is finalist for National Book Award.

• November: Maya Angelou receives the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community at the National Book Award ceremony.

• November 22: Wanda Coleman dies. 

Related:
• 16 volumes of poetry published in 2013 
• The year in African American poetry, 2012  
• The year in African American poetry, 2011
• Black Poetry: A Timeline, 1854 - 2013

Poetry Sightings in the "Invisible Child" series

This week in the New York Times's "Invisible Child" series about a girl who is homeless in New York City, there were a couple of moments where black poetry was highlighted. For one, there's a video adjoining one of the stories in the series where the little girl, Dasani, recites Maya Angelou's poem "Phenomenal Woman." Even as she's distracted by her younger sibling, the girl continues reading the poem from memory. 

Here's another mention of black poetry from the series:

Minutes later, Dasani is sitting in McKinney’s packed auditorium for an assembly on Black History Month.

She hates Black History Month.

“It’s always the same poems,” she says.

The new honor roll is called out. Dasani’s name is missing. It must be a mistake, she tells herself. But when she hears all the other names, the truth sinks in.

She slumps in her chair as a group of boys takes the stage to recite Langston Hughes.

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?

Dasani knows this poem well. They read it every year. She stares blankly at the stage.

Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load
Or does it explode?

That's Hughes's "Harlem," which is often known by that question about a "dream deferred." After coming across that comment from the girl about "the same poems," I wondered what it would mean to expose young people to different and new black poetry. Or perhaps more important, what would it mean to expose teachers and other school officials to other poems.  

Related:
• "Invisible Child" series and coverage

"Invisible Child" series and coverage

Over the last couple of days, I read and have been discussing this 5-part series "Invisible Child" by Andrea Elliott from The New York Times about an 12-year-old girl Dasani, who lives in a homeless shelter in New York City. Links to the series:

• Girl in the Shadows: Dasani’s Homeless Life  (pt 1)
• A future rests on a fragile foundation (pt 2)
• A Neighborhood’s Profound Divide (pt 3)
• Finding Strength in Bonds of Family (pt 4)
• Reasons to Dream (pt 5)
• Summary of reporting and source notes

What follows are links to coverage of the series:
• December 22: The New York Times is dead wrong about drug addiction - Salon - Sarah Beller
• December 19: In Major Deal, RH Buys Elliott's 'Invisible Child' Book - Publishers Weekly - Rachel Deahl 
• December 18: Mayor Bloomberg On Homeless Girl Featured In The Times - ThinkProgress - Aviva Shen
• December 18: Dasani, the Lost Generation, and the Hidden Side of Poverty - Beacon Broaside - Noliwe M. Rooks 
• December 18: Was the Dasani Series Unfair to Bloomberg? - New York Times - Margaret Sullivan
• December 17: Bloomberg's Real Antipoverty Record - Wall Street Journal - Howard Wolfson and Linda Gibbs
• December 14: Battling Homelessness in New York City - New York News
• December 13: New York Times Uses F-Word! - The New Republic - Alec Macgillis
• December 13: The post-script for Dasani and her family - Capital New York - Matthew Lynch
• December 13: Why you should read "Invisible Child" - Chicago Reader - Steve Bogira
• December 12: In Brooklyn, Photographing an Invisible Child -- New York Times -- Ruth Fremson
• December12: Reading Club | ‘Invisible Child’ - New York Times -  Katherine Schulten and Amanda C. Brown
• December 12: De Blasio Invokes Dasani in Vow to Change City’s Approach to Its Homeless - Politicker - Jill Colvin
• December 12: ‘Invisible Child’: Behind the Scenes, Before and After - New York Times - Margaret Sullivan
• December12: A Homeless Baby's Sad Legacy - New Yorker - Amy Davidson
• December 12: Some People Think We Have No Obligations to the Homeless - Philadelphia mag - Maya K. Francis
• December 11: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Dasani? - City Journal - Bob McManus
• December 11: New York Times series puts face to homeless families in NYC - The Grio - Carrie Healey
• December10: Dasani’s Life in a Homeless Shelter - New York Times - Letters to the editor
• December10: A Homeless Girl’s Story Highlights Family Planning and Poverty - The Root - Keli Goff
• December10: Profiling a "Girl in the Shadows" (interview with Andrea Elliott) - WNYC - The Brian Lehrer Show
• December 10: Shining a Light on the Politics of Poverty - US News - Nicole Hemmer
• December 9: The New York Times’ ‘homeless’ hooey - New York Post - Editorial Board
• December 9: Mistake means NYTimes series debuts early in Las Vegas Sun - Poynter - Kristen Hare

Related:
Poetry Sightings in the "Invisible Child" series

Digital humanities, print culture & African American literary studies

Are you a scholar of African American literature who does print culture studies, or are you a print culture scholar who examines African American literature? Are you a scholar of African American literature who does digital humanities, or are you a DH'er who considers race? Questions like those in fact carry considerable weight. 

How you define yourself dictates the ways your work moves, and perhaps more importantly, those definitions determine the academic and professional neighborhoods, so to speak, where you reside. So far, there have been relatively few African Americans associated with DH at MLA. But, as we know, African American actively engage technology....just somewhere else beyond MLA.

Reading P. Gabrielle Foreman's recent article had me returning again to some of these questions about the identities of print culture scholars vs. scholars of African American literature. I get the sense that many scholars of African American literature (based on their publication records) start with black literary texts and authors and then go into print culture. I get the sense that many print culture scholars start in fields other than African American literature first.

When print culture scholars later arrive in the realm of African American literary studies, it can sometimes create tension, especially when and if those seemingly new arrivals organize African American projects that exclude large numbers of established (black) African American literary scholars.

I'm still working some of these ideas out, but it seems that the issue of neighborhoods and sites of origin are things we need to consider a little more when it comes to figuring out what's happening at the places where digital humanities, print culture, and African American literary studies converge.

Related:
• Notes on P. Gabrielle Foreman's "Riff, Call, and Response" Pt. 1
• Notes on P. Gabrielle Foreman's "Riff, Call, and Response" Pt. 2
• The Demographics of Literary fields (and sub-fields)  
• From Maryemma Graham to more Af-Am Literary Field Notes

Do black men and women college students respond differently to poetry?

There are considerable reports and coverage on gender and ethnic differences related to the sciences. But for some reason or many, we have less research and writing concerning gender and ethnic differences in the humanities. Much of what we witness is anecdotal.

But even anecdotes are helpful as starting points. (By the way, one reason we have little research in this regard is because of our field's disinvestment in issues concerning pedagogy and students.)

I've wondered over the years whether collegiate black men and women respond differently to poetry. I stumbled onto the question and potential answers based on my coincidental experience of teaching a course for first-year black men over the last 9 years and a course for first-year black women over the last 5 years.

From Maryemma Graham to more Af-Am Literary Field Notes

I began the semester by writing...starting to write a local history about 10 Years of African American Literature at SIUE. Then, I came across Maryemma Graham's article "Black is Gold: African American Literature, Critical Literacy, and Twenty-First-Century Pedagogies" in Lovalerie King and Shirley Moody-Turner's edited collection Contemporary African American Literature: The Living Canon (2013).

The first part of Graham's article in particular was illuminating for me as she charted out a history of the field explaining how African American literary studies turned away from a focus on issues concerning teaching and began devoting more attention to theory and criticism. The histories of black literary journals, noted Graham, offered a sign of the changing times and interest:

The premier journal in black literature today, African American Review, founded in 1967 as Negro American Literature Forum, bore the subtitle "For School and University Teachers" and received its support from Indiana State University's School of Education. The first change occurred in the title: Negro to Black when the journal moved to the College of Liberal Arts. African American Review, like many early black journals, followed the conventional practice of subordinating pedagogy to literary criticism, as the need to validate and "credential" black literature increased. A similar case holds for the College Language Journal, founded ten years earlier in 1957. While the name did not change, a review of the contents over more than five decades shows the progression from discussions of teaching practice, to major essays on traditional British and American literature, to today's focus almost exclusively on African American literary criticism.

Re-reading Graham's article and then thinking about P. Gabrielle Foreman's recent article about struggles of black scholars of early African American literature had me remembering the need for even more notes on the field of African American literary studies.  

The history that Graham presents is really important. She clarifies the extents to which the current state and focus of our field were not inevitable. What if, for example, leading scholars, funding institutions, and journals had decided to continue focusing on pedagogy and students? What if the field had produced considerably more conferences, articles, and books "for school and university teachers" over the last 25 years?

We really need more histories and sketches of the field like the ones that Graham and Foreman have produced.

Related: 
• The Field of African American Literary Studies    
• Notes on P. Gabrielle Foreman's "Riff, Call, and Response" Pt. 1
• Notes on P. Gabrielle Foreman's "Riff, Call, and Response" Pt. 2
• The Demographics of Literary fields (and sub-fields)  
• Digital humanities, print culture & African American literary studies 

The Demographics of Literary fields (and sub-fields)

P. Gabrielle Foreman's article "A Riff, A Call, and A Response" notes the under-representation, if not exclusion, of African American literary scholars in projects related to African American print culture and editing. Reading Foreman's essay had me thinking about the demographics of areas and organizations within the larger field of English or literary studies.

I get the sense that the largest number of African American literary scholars concentrate on modern to contemporary black subjects. I'm thinking about all the scholars who write about Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, the Black Arts Movement, contemporary black women's writing, hip hop, and so forth. On the other hand, we have what is sometimes referred to "early" African American literature, which could include time periods right before the Harlem Renaissance, but more formally refers to the 19th century and before.

There are many scholars in these "early" realms, but their numbers are much smaller than those in the modern to contemporary areas. The upcoming third edition of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature will further mark the divide between "early" and modern segments of the field. The recent Norton will include a 2-volume set with Vol 1. focusing on "Beginnings through the Harlem Renaissance" and Vol 2 concentrating on "Realism, Naturalism, Modernism to the Present."

Memorizing Adrian Matejka's "Sporting Life" with collegiate black men

Earlier this semester, I told the guys that we'd select a few poems we were reading, memorize them, and then present them in front of the class. I gave them the option of learning various poems, but somehow, the majority of the class landed on Adrian Matejka's "Sporting Life" from The Big Smoke.

In some respects, the poem is a "found poem," as Matejka draws on Jack Johnson's remarks to a reporter. Johnson was resisting the idea that he over worry about the dangers of the life he was living. Matejka's poem opens

People always talking about if
& suppose like those words are worth
more than money, more than the crease
a silk stocking makes on a woman’s

thigh. More than the grumble of a Thomas
Flyer engine. So I take the side of my
pleasures.

The bad, confident talk of Matejka's Jack Johnson impressed us, so we committed to learning the piece. In retrospect,  I now realize that Johnson's attitude resembled the rappers and ball players that the guys know so well from popular culture.

The first time guys attempted to read the poem from memory in front of the class didn't go so well. Dudes were reading in a stilted manner that would've had Matejka and especially Johnson shaking their heads in shame.

But finally, one of the guys led the breakthrough. Before reading, he leaned on a wall in the front of the room and crossed his arms. The idea was that you had to be cool while channeling the spirit of Jack Johnson. The whole room laughed out loud at their classmate's gestures and then erupted louder with applause after he made his way through the poem.

After that, if you didn't read the poem with some Johnson-ian flare for coolness and confidence, then the verdict in the class at least was that you weren't really reading.  
 
Related:
• A Notebook on Adrian Matejka
• A Notebook on bad men in poetry

Divisions between Print Culture & African American Literary Scholars

P. Gabrielle Foreman's article "A Riff, A Call, and A Response" addresses, among other issues, the problem of African American literary scholars being excluded from some recent gatherings on African American print culture and editing.

Some of the issues discussed by Foreman reminded me of a central point in Leon Jackson's article "The Talking Book and the Talking Book Historian: African American Cultures of Print -- The State of the Discipline" from Book History published in 2010. According to Jackson, book history scholars and African American literary scholars have been distant from each other for a number of reasons.

Some of that distance is reflected in the idea that orality and performance were long pervasive focal points in African American literary studies. Those focal points assisted in determining that book history and African American literary scholarship would develop in notably different ways.

And sure, there have always been scholars of African American literature who concentrate on book history, print culture, and matters of production. However, you still get the sense that their works and presentations did not circulate so widely and thus did not become integral to book history.  There's a similar history concerning why editorial theorists and scholars of African American literature are distant. And a similar one now with the field of digital humanities.

None of what I'm saying here excuses the exclusion that Foreman highlights, but it does, I hope, provide some insight into how and why we now have those divisions.

Related:
• Notes on P. Gabrielle Foreman's "Riff, Call, and Response" Pt. 1
• Notes on P. Gabrielle Foreman's "Riff, Call, and Response" Pt. 2
• The Demographics of Literary fields (and sub-fields)  
• From Maryemma Graham to more Af-Am Literary Field Notes  
• Digital humanities, print culture & African American literary studies 

Notes on P. Gabrielle Foreman's "Riff, Call, and Response" Pt. 2

P. Gabrielle Foreman's article "A Riff, A Call, and A Response" from Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers (Vol. 30 No. 2 - 2013) addresses "one example of junior Americanist specialists who have been allowed to exercise a great deal of power in articulating the scope, aim, and direction of the study of African American print culture."

She's taking up an issue that has long frustrated black scholars in the field--their exclusion from even projects and discourses where they have produced substantial work. Foreman points out that:

At a 2012 week-long summer seminar on “African American Cultures of Print” hosted by the American Antiquarian Society, of the some twenty-two chosen participants only a small fraction, five, were African American. 5/22; that’s less than 25 percent. Of the dozen or so graduate students who were admitted and came, how many belonged to the group around which the symposium was structured? One. One sole African American graduate student. 1/12. About five of the more than twenty assigned readings were penned by African American critics. And while some of that scholarship was produced by indispensable African Americanists, there were days on which, out of four or five readings, no Black literary historians’ work was included on a syllabus crowded with pieces penned by writers with other areas of expertise (311).

I've been saying for a while that African American literary scholars would do well to gather and present numerical data a little more in our work, so my eyes lit up when I saw Foreman making her case utilizing such an approach (i.e. "5/22; that's less than 25 percent"). Awareness of those percentages assist us in getting a clearer measure of diversity or lack thereof.

Notes on P. Gabrielle Foreman's "Riff, Call, and Response" Pt. 1

P. Gabrielle Foreman has an important essay "A Riff, A Call, and A Response: Reframing the Problem That Led to Our Being Tokens in Ethnic and Gender Studies; or, Where Are We Going Anyway and with Whom Will We Travel?" in Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers  (Vol. 30 No. 2, 2013) As the extended title suggests, she covers considerable ground. What I'll try to do here (in a series of short entries) is address some of the issues that caught my attention from the article.

In general, Foreman's article identifies some instances where African American literary scholars and their scholarship were seemingly excluded from projects that focused on African American print culture. In subsequent blog entries, I'm going to review some of what she discusses in those instances. But first, I should perhaps clarify what makes her essay important in my view.

Covers of Octavia Butler’s Mind of My Mind

By Briana Whiteside

Mary explains, “My eyes—traffic-light green…and my skin, a kind of light coffee, were gifts from the white man’s body that Doro was wearing when Rina got pregnant” (277).

Over time the covers of Octavia Butler’s books have changed in significant ways. I find the three above covers of Mind of My Mind interesting because only one—if we go by the description provided by Butler —could possibly resemble Mary, the novel's protagonist. The woman's face on the book in the middle most resembles Mary’s “traffic-light green” eyes and possible “light coffee” skin complexion, though the overall cover is tinted green.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the politics of hair in regards to black women. When I look at the covers of Mind of My Mind, I’m reminded of those politics. Although Mary is a black woman and considered beautiful, there are no descriptions of her hair texture in the book. The tightly coiled hair depicted on one cover, the figure with no hair, and the loose waves on the other seem to tell different narratives of the same story.

Related:
A Notebook on Octavia Butler

Briana Whiteside is a graduate student in English at SIUE and a contributing writer for the Cultural Front. 

29 poems by and about black women (Fall 2013)

In one of my courses this semester, we focused on African American literary art, including the following 29 poems by and about black women. The class was comprised of first-year black women college students. I noticed that they were especially drawn to the poems by Maya Angelou, Kelly Norman Ellis, Nikki Giovanni, Allison Joseph, Jessica Care Moore, and Evie Shockley. Some of their interest was prompted by how we read the poems out loud in class. 


Maya Angelou – "Still I Rise," "Phenomenal Woman"
Gwendolyn Brooks – "kitchenette building," "a song in the front yard"
Lucille Clifton – "slaveship"
Jayne Cortez – "I am New York City"
Kelly Norman Ellis – "Raised by Women"
Mari Evans – "I am a Black Woman"
Nikki Giovanni – "Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)"
Frances E. W. Harper – "Bury me in a Free Land"
Essex Hemphill – "Soft Targets"
Langston Hughes – "Down and Out," "Mother to Son"
Tyehimba Jess – "When I Speak of Blues Be Clear"
Georgia Douglas Johnson – "The Heart of a Woman"
Helene Johnson – "Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem"
Allison Joseph – "Thirty Lines about the Fro," "Sonnet for a Good Mood"
jessica Care moore – "The Black Statue of Liberty"
Tracie Morris – "Project Princess"
Sonia Sanchez – "Summer Words of a Sustuh Addict," "a/needed/poem for my salvation"
Evie Shockley – "“improper(ty) behavior"
Patricia Smith – "Hip-Hop Ghazal"
Margaret Walker – "“My Truth and My Flame," "For My People," "Kissie Lee," "Molly Means"
Phillis Wheatley – "On Being Brought From Africa to America"


Related:
• 100 Poems read & re-read in 2012
• 100-plus Poems I Read & Re-Read (online) in 2011 

How Rap bypassed Poetry and became African American literature

For years now, folks have been discussing and often debating whether rap is poetry. The discussion has been going on for years and years, but things heated up a little more a few years ago when Jay Z's Decoded and Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois's The Anthology of Rap were released. The press surrounding those works elevated the ongoing exchanges about the rap as poetry question.

But in other realms, in particular, in black literature courses across the country where students were using The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (1996, 2003, 2014), the question of rap as poetry was less pronounced. Instead, readers had evidence, based on the inclusions, that rap was certainly part of African American literary tradition, regardless of whether it was poetry. 

In 1996, the first edition of the Norton contains the category "rap," which has:

Gil Scott-Heron: The Revoltuin will Not Be Televised
Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five: The Message
Public Enemy: Don't Believe the Hype
Queen Latifah: The Evil That Men Do

In 2003, the second edition of the Norton renames the section "Hip Hop" and contains even more entries:

Gil Scott-Heron: The Revoltuin will Not Be Televised
Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five: The Message
Public Enemy: Don't Believe the Hype
Queen Latifah: The Evil That Men Do
 Eric B. & Rakim: I Ain't No Joke
Bigge Smalls (The Notorious B.I.G.): Things Done Changed
Nas: N.Y. State of Mind

In 2014, the third edition of the Norton will include:

Gil Scott-Heron: The Revoltuin will Not Be Televised
Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five: The Message
Public Enemy: Don't Believe the Hype
Queen Latifah: The Evil That Men Do
 Eric B. & Rakim: I Ain't No Joke
Bigge Smalls (The Notorious B.I.G.): Things Done Changed
Nas: N.Y. State of Mind
Jay-Z: Song Cry
Jean Grae: Don't Rush Me

Rap lyrics rarely appear in poetry anthologies. On the other hand, anthologies featuring work by African Americans do not circulate as widely circulated as the Norton does.

The "Hip Hop" subsection in the Norton appears under the main section entitled "The Vernacular Tradition," which includes gospel, blues, and jazz, and no poetry. Thus, the rap as poetry discussions will likely continue, even as generations of students are encouraged to view rap as part of literary traditions.

Related:
• Recent Rap as Poetry Debates, Conversations 
• Jay-Z, Adam Bradley, & the Rap-Poetry Conversations

A Timeline of African American poets published in Poetry Magazine

The following years and months mark appearances of works by African American poets in Poetry magazine.  At the moment, this timeline is a work in progress, and thus incomplete.

1918: Fenton Johnson's "The Lost Love," ""How Long, O Lord!," "Who Is That A-Walking in the Corn?,"

1925 July: Countee Cullen's "Epitaphs"

1926 January: Countee Cullen's "For Amy Lowell"

1926 November: Langston Hughes's Blues selections: "Hard Luck," "Po Boy Blues," "Red Roses," "Suicide"

1931 October: Langston Hughes's The Quick and the Dead (selection of poems)

1937 November: Margaret Walker's "For My People"

1938 July: Margaret Walker's "The Struggle Staggers Us"

1938 July: Sterling Brown's "The Young Ones"

1939 March: Margaret Walker's "We Have Been Believers"

1940 April: Langston Hughes Two Poems: "Out of Work," "Love Again Blues"

1941 May: Langston Hughes Four poems: "Dust Bowl," "Southern Mammy Sings," "Crossing Jordan," "Black Maria"

1943 July: Robert Hayden's "O Daedalus, Fly Away Home"

1943 September: Langston Hughes Four poems: "Folks who Knock at Madam's Door,"Crowing Hen Blues"

1944 November: Gwendolyn Brooks Two poems: "Gay Chaps at the Bar" and "Still Do I Keep My Look, My Identity"

1947 February: Langston Hughes's Four poems: "Seashore Through Dark Glasses," "Blues on a Box," "Who but the Lord?," "Yesterday and Today"

1949 March: Gwendolyn Brooks's "Children of the Poor," "A Light and Diplomatic Bird"

1950 July: Melvin B. Tolson's "From Libretto for the Republic of Liberia"

1951 September: Melvin B. Tolson's "E. & O. E."

1952 October: Melvin B. Tolson's "The Man from Halicarnassus"

1959 September: Gwendolyn Brooks's The Bean Eaters suite: "Old Mary," "We Real Cool," "Strong Men, Riding Horses," "The Bean Eaters"

1961 August: Langston Hughes's "Blues in a Stereo"

1962 April: Amiri Baraka's "Balboa, the Entertainer"

1964 December: Amiri Baraka's "Like Rousseau"

1969 October: Calvin Forbes's "Poem on My Birthday"

1969 November: Gwendolyn Brooks's "Henry Rago"

1970 June: Calvin Forbes's "The Chocolate Soldiers," "Good Morning Blues," "Gabriel's Blues"

1982 October: Rita Dove's "Flirtation" 

1984 September: Rita Dove's "Pomade," "The Wake"

1985 October: Rita Dove's "Old Folk's Home, Jerusalem"

1988 June: Rita Dove's "Ars Poetica"

1989 January: Rita Dove's "The Breathing, the Endless News"

1992 April: Elizabeth Alexander's "Stravinsky in L.A.," "Cough Medicine," "Apollo"

1992 October: Rita Dove's "Demeter's Prayer to Hades," "Sonnet," "Protection" "The Venus of Willendorf"

1993 September: Elizabet Alexander's "Manhattan Elegy," "Equinox"

1993 September: Kevin Young's "The Living"

1994 February: Elizabeth Alexander's "L.A. by Night," "At the Beach"

1995 May: Rita Dove's "Her Island"

1998 January: Rita Dove's "Testimonial"

2002 October: Rita Dove's "'I have been a stranger in a strange land'"

2003 March: Rita Dove's "Reverie in Open Air," "Cozy Apologia"

2004 May: Kevin Young's "Early Show"

2006 March: Major Jackson's "Letter to Brooks: Spring Garden"

2007 March: Afaa Michael Weaver's "American Income"

2007 July/August: Kevin Young's "Ode to the Midwest"

2007 September: Lucille Clifton's "Sorrows"

2007 November: Kevin Young's "from Book of Hours"

2008 March: Terrance Hayes's "Stick Elegy," "New Folk," "Mystic Bounce," "Cocktails with Orpheus"

2008 December: Roger Reeves's "Cymothoa Exigua" and "The Mare of Money"
 
2009 January: Langston Hughes's "You and your whole race," "Remember," "I Look at the World"

2009 October: Kevin Young's "The Mission"

2011 July/August: Calvin Forbes's "Talking Blues" and "Mamma Said" 

2011 July/August: Nikki Giovanni's "Chasing Utopia"(story)

2011 September: Kevin Young's "Pietà"
 
2011 September: Reginald Dwayne Betts's “For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers”

2011 November: Marcus Wicker "Animal Farm," "Bay Window Lauds," "The Way We Were Made"

2011 December: Camille Dungy's "From the First, the Body Was Dirt"

2012 June: Rita Dove's "November for Beginners," "Dusting"

2012 July/August: Adrian Matejka's "Map to the Stars" and "End of Side A"

2012 November: Reginald Dwayne Betts's "A Postmodern Two-Step," "At the End of Life, a Secret," "For the City that Nearly Broke Me;" Rickey Laurentiis's "Southern Gothic," "Swing Low," "You Are Not Christ."

2013 May: Amiri Baraka's "A Post-Racial Anthology?" (Review)

2013 November: Phillip B. Williams's "Homan and Chicago Avenue," "Do-rag," "Of Darker Ceremonies," "Speak"

2013 October: Marcus Wicker's "Ode to Browsing the Web"

2013 November: Harmony Holiday "Do any black children grow up casual?,""Gazelle Lost in Watts," "Motown Philly Back Again," "Niggas in Raincoats Reprise"

2013 December: Douglas Kearney's "Kronos: Father of the Year," "Noah / Ham: Fathers of the Year," "Every Hard Rapper's Father Ever: Father of the Year," "Jim Trueblood: Father of the Year"

2014 July/August: Rickey Laurentiis's "Black Gentleman," "I Saw I Dreamt Two Men," "Study in Black," "Writing an Elegy"

Related:
• Poetry &the Poetry Foundation Site  
• Timelines 

Interview with Poetry Genius Editor, Austin Allen

Austin Allen is a poet, essayist, and editor. He earned his MFA at Johns Hopkins University. He now lives in New York City. By day (and often well into the night), Allen is editor of Poetry Genius—a sister site of the annotation site Rap Genius. To assist with my “Becoming a Rap Genius” course, Allen agreed to answer a few questions associated with his work at Poetry Genius.

1. What were you doing in your pre-RG days that in retrospect likely greatly prepared you for what you're doing with Poetry Genius today?

Allen: Before Poetry Genius I was working as an adjunct lecturer in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University, where I had graduated with my MFA in poetry in 2012. Prior to my MFA I had worked as an editor for another Web startup, Big Think, whose mission also involved both education and entertainment (interviews with leading thinkers and artists). So when I learned that Rap Genius was starting a poetry project, I saw it as a great way to combine my existing job skills and interests.

2. I'm thinking that relatively few people with MFA degrees end up in web startups; or at least, the curriculum for MFA programs typically do not concentrate on web-based projects. So what was the experience like moving from a literary world to a tech environment like Poetry Genius?

Allen: It has been a big adjustment, although aided by my previous experience with the faster pace of startup culture, and by the fact that my work is still largely editorial and educational. This job has posed some challenging editorial questions that overlap with technical ones. How to build out a giant literary library from a platform originally designed for song lyrics? How to optimize "crowd" annotation of literature in terms of both participation and results? How to make the platform both easy and worthwhile for authors to use? What about educators and students, whose needs are very different? Tackling these questions has meant keeping my English-major skills sharp while upping my game as a Web editor.

3. On college campuses, there's varying degrees of "group work" assigned. From what I can tell, students do not always fine that approach appealing. But it's my sense that on Poetry Genius and perhaps at the Rap Genius company itself, you're constantly collaborating with people—basically doing a kind of group work. What's most exciting *and* challenging about your Poetry Genius collaborations/group work?

Allen:  Most challenging has been collaborating with our tech team to find creative solutions to the "growing pains" problems described above. This is a slow, long-term, back-and-forth process, but one that has rewarding breakthrough moments as well. Most exciting has been collaborating with readers and writers from all over the world to annotate favorite works. There's a kind of magic to seeing an "obscure" text like The Waste Land accumulate a whole body of shared knowledge over time.

4. Generally speaking, what are a few common qualities that contributors you admire on Poetry Genius possess or demonstrate? What in short do they seem to do that you find impressive or valuable? Why?

Allen: I admire contributors who bring a passion for reading combined with real intellectual curiosity--a willingness to dig deeper into both the subjects they know and the subjects they don't. A sense of humor doesn't hurt in annotations, either!

5. What are a couple of trends in terms of audience viewership (i.e. “hits”) on Poetry Genius that have surprised or intrigued you?

Allen: I've been intrigued by our audience's love of contemporary spoken word poetry--thanks to YouTube, many examples of this art form are now going viral--as well as by their fascination with some of the most famously difficult texts in English poetry. The Waste Land and Hamlet, for example, are consistently popular. People seem to enjoy coming together to track down the references and tackle the enigmas.

6. What is one way you now view or read poetry that would have been unlikely if you were not working with Poetry Genius?

Allen: I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad, but I now tend to read poems with a closer eye toward their likely appeal to a broad audience. Popularity isn't the final judgement of a poem's merits, and some of the poems I love would be of limited interest to those not deeply interested in the art form. But popularity isn't something to resist or disparage, either. Just as there are rap songs that are mostly in dialogue with other rap songs, rather than with the world outside rap fandom, many "literary" poems are insularly engaged with other poems--probably more so than they realize. I find myself thinking about this more and more, and about the related question of why some highly allusive, difficult poems, such as The Waste Land, nevertheless manage to become very popular. I have some theories, but maybe they'll have to wait for another question!

7. What’s your sense about the differences between the people who populate both sites—Poetry Genius and Rap Genius? Or better yet, how might you generally differentiate between the typical poetry genius and rap genius participants?

Allen: My sense is that the majority of people active on Poetry Genius right now originally discovered it through Rap Genius, rather than independently, so it's hard to separate the groups. Usually the fans active on PG have a preexisting interest in books and written poetry, as you'd expect. But I've been happy to see, too, that PG has helped many fans discover classic texts they hadn't come across before--our Forum threads have been a testament to this.

8. What’s one or two things you like to see happen on Poetry Genius that you haven’t see or haven’t seen enough of just yet?

Allen: I would love to see more original blog posts and essays on the site. This is a wonderful forum in which to share book recommendations, criticism aimed at a popular audience, etc. We're going to be spotlighting more of this in the coming months!

Related:
• Becoming a Rap Genius: Resources

A Poetry Genius Bibliography

Compiled by Howard Rambsy II & Briana Whiteside

2013
• September 23: How Motionpoems, Rap Genius, APR Are Driving A Poetry Renaissance
• September 12: Poetry Genius: This Brilliant website may revolutionize how poetry is taught in schools
• September 4: Etgar Keret Annotates a Story on Poetry Genius
• July 25: Junot Diaz is a Poetry genius
• July 25: Junot Díaz uses social media to share inspiration for Pulitzer-winning novel
• July 25: Junot Díaz Annotates a Selection of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for “Poetry Genius”
• July 24: Junot Diaz jokes about Star Wars in annotated Oscar Wao
• July 22: Junot Diaz Annotates ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’ on Poetry Genius
• July 22: Junot Diaz Is Footnoting His Own Footnotes at Rap Genius
• July 10: The rhyme and the reason: Crowd-sourced site Poetry Genius
• June 23: Can’t stop wont stop: Rap Genius launches sites for annotating news, rock, and poetry
• May 29: Poetry is dead v poetry genius
• May 6: Sheryl Sandberg Annotates Her Writing on Rap Genius
• February 24: Here’s How The Team Behind Rap Genius Could Take Down Cliff’s Notes
• February 21: Rap genius has poetry on the brain
• January 17: Joshua Mehigan & Samuel Johnson Annotate on Rap Genius
• January 3: Rap genius launches poetry brain

2012
• December 14: Showing Our Poetry Love

Related:
• Becoming a Rap Genius: Resources

Becoming a Rap Genius: Resources

In the spring semester of 2014, I'll teach a course "Becoming a Rap Genius." Here, in an effort to expand the walls of the formal classroom, I'm providing a notebook of resources related to the course.

Entries:
• Course description
• Course syllabus (coming soon)
• Interview with Poetry Genius Editor, Austin Allen 
• Rap Genius bibliography
• Poetry Genius bibliography
• Becoming a Poetry Genius 

Poetry Genius Projects
• Timeline of African American Poetry, 1854 - 2013
• The Richard Wright Autobiography Covers
• A Notebook on Slavery and Liberation

Notes on class activities
• Artfully Cunning Fugitive Slaves & Rap Genius
• The art of annotating poems on Poetry Genius

Related: 
• A Notebook on Rap Genius

A Rap Genius Bibliography

Compiled by Howard Rambsy II & Briana Whiteside

2013
• November 14: Rap Genius Says It Will Seek Licenses for Lyrics
• July 23: We’re trying to make Rap Genius into Everything Genius

2012
• October 8: Discovering the Meaning of Rap
• October 3: Andreessen Horowitz invests $15 million in Rap Genius

2011
• November 30: Hip hop don’t stop rap genius aims to explain everything
• November 27: Rapgenius site lets crowd decode hip hop lyrics
• November 21: Interview: Rap Genius 
• November 4: Rap Genius Plans to explain meaning of rock
• September 9: [Under The Radar] Rap Genius – Rap’s Wikipedia
• September 6: New Tech startup rap genius
• September 3: Music industry wants a piece of lyrics site Rap Genius
• September: RapGenius Builds Web Community For Rap Lyrics
• August 26: What’s that lyric mean?

2010
• December 29: What’s your hip hop IQ?

2009
• November 19: Intellectualizing Rap: A Labor of Love

Related:
• Becoming a Rap Genius: Resources 

The New Jim Crow Reflections

Haley Scholars Fall 2013 Reading Groups 

Commentators and general readers have discussed the value of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow in shedding new light on the racial implications of the criminal justice system. She covers considerable ground and presents a body of compelling and at times dreadful evidence.

How, in brief, have your views changed or deepened as a result of reading her book? What, in particular, affected your thinking most and why? 

Race and Outliers - epilogue

Haley Scholars Fall 2013 Reading Groups 

The epilogue at first appears to be the final presentation of a randomly selected and researched outlier. But we soon learn that the closing outlier narrative is in fact a narrative about the author, Malcolm Gladwell. We learn, perhaps not surprisingly at this point, that Gladwell’s own success emerges from the hidden advantages and multiple opportunities that his parents and grandparents received.

Among other important issues, Gladwell explains how light skin color allowed his otherwise disadvantaged black relatives to excel in ways that their fellow dark-skinned Jamaicans did not. Having an ancestor who had “a little bit of whiteness” or having one who got a chance at meaningful work became an “extraordinary advantage.” It was an advantage not simply based on working hard but rather on arbitrary yet powerful cultural and structural factors.

What stood out to you most concerning Gladwell’s discussions of skin color and advantage (or disadvantage)? Why?