Select Graywolf Press Books by Black Writers, 2000 - 2013

Graywolf Press takes up considerable space in my collection. I'm fine with that. They've produced good books by really talented writers. In addition to volumes by Elizabeth Alexander, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Harryette Mullen, Tracy K. Smith, and Natasha Trethewey, Graywolf has published scholarly work by Alexander and Kevin Young.

I acquired the following Graywolf Press books over the years.

Poetry
2000: Domestic Work (paperback) by Natasha Trethewey
2001: Antebellum Dream Book (paperback) by Elizabeth Alexander
2002: Bellocq's Ophelia (paperback) by Natasha Trethewey
2003: The Body's Question (paperback) by Tracy K. Smith
2005: The Maverick Room (paperback) by Thomas Sayers Ellis
2005: American Sublime (paperback) by Elizabeth Alexander
2006: Recyclopedia: Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse and Drudge (paperback) by Harryette Mullen
2007: Duende (paperback) by Tracy K. Smith
2009: Praise Song for the Day (paperback) by Elizabeth Alexander
2010: Skin Inc.: Identity Repair Poems (hardcover) by Thomas Sayers Ellis 
2010: Crave Radiance New and Selected Poems (hardcover) by Elizabeth Alexander
2010: Missing You, Metropolis (paperback) by Gary Jackson
2011: Life on Mars (paperback) by Tracy K. Smith
2012: Crave Radiance New and Selected Poems (paperback) by Elizabeth Alexander
2013: Skin Inc.: Identity Repair Poems (paperback) by Thomas Sayers Ellis

Nonfiction
2004: The Black Interior by Elizabeth Alexander
2012: The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness by Kevin Young

Trethewey's Domestic Work, Smith's The Body's Question, and Jackson's Missing You, Metropolis were recipients of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Alexander's Praise Song for the Day was read at President Barack Obama's first inauguration. Smith's Life on Mars was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and Kevin Young's The Grey Album won the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. 

I'll eventually purchase Graywolf Press books by Dexter L. Booth, Constance Quarterman Bridges, Carl Phillips, and Claudia Rankine. I also have to get Haryette Mullen's Urban Tumbleweed (2013).

Related:
• A Notebook on Book History
• Black Poetry published by Graywolf Press 

The Size & Shape of Evie Shockley's books

Many of the 250 or so volumes published since 2000 in my collection are primarily in the range of 8.5 x 6 inches to 9 x 6 inches. Evie Shockley's books are different. Shockley's a half-red sea (2006) is 8.7 x 6.8 inches and the new black (2011) is 9.6 x 7.2 inches. The size and shape of Shockley's books accommodate the designs of her poems, some of which spread far out across the page.

Related:
• A Notebook on Book History
• Evie Shockley

Those Allison Joseph books

When I began developing a collection of volumes of poetry published since 2000, those Allison Joseph books were there. When I started actively blogging about poetry, those Allison Joseph books were there. And now, as I'm  imagining the book histories of contemporary poetry, you know what books are there.

1992: What Keeps us Here
1997: Soul Train
1997: In Every Seam
2003: Imitation of Life
2004: Worldly Pleasures
2009: Voice: Poems
2010: my father’s kites: poems
2014: Trace Particles
2015: Little Epiphanies
2016: The Purpose of Hands
2016: Mercurial
2016: Multitudes
2016: Mortal Rewards
2016: Double Identity
2017: Surviving Artistry
2017: What Once You Loved
2017: Taking Back Sad
2018: Confessions of a Barefaced Woman
2018: Little Epiphanies (reissued)

2018: Corporal Muse

2019: Smart Pretender

2020: The Last Human Heart

2021: Professional Happiness

2021: Lexicon 

2022: Speak and Spell: poems 

2022: Any Proper Weave  

2022: Our Time Among Roses 

2022: Bright Fame: Love Poems 

2022: Psalm for a Second Meeting 

Related:

• A Notebook on Book History
• Allison Joseph

Nikky Finney's Head Off & Split

Talented, hard-working poets don't always get recognized for their creations, so I was pleased when Nikky Finney's Head Off & Split was awarded the National Book Award for Poetry in 2011. The post-award printings of Finney's book include her moving and memorable acceptance speech.  

Related:
• A Notebook on Book History
• Nikky Finney

HBCUs, Technology & Vital Interventions

Institute participants listen during presentation on digital collections at the AUC library

It's one thing to talk about and even embrace the idea of interdisciplinary work; however, it's something else to get sociologists, a visual artist, literature scholars, a historian, an African American Studies scholar, a psychologist, a musician, librarians, a folklorist and poet, Communications scholars, and a film scholar together in the same room conversing and collaborating on interrelated projects. Well, Morehouse College scholars Corrie Claiborne and Samuel Livingston managed to make it happen for a UNCF Mellon Summer Teaching and Learning Institute focused on technology and digital humanities (DH).

During the 3-day institute "Mapping the Future by Mining the Past," participants from Claflin University, Dillard University, Morehouse College, Paine College, and Spelman College worked on projects that explored "the intersections of the Humanities and digital scholarship," as the program material noted. I served as a presenter, highlighting the value of blogging and utilizing the crowd-source annotation Genius site (also known as Rap Genius).

There were extended discussions about the possibility of using iTunes U, a popular Apple service that allows academic departments and universities to present a range of educational materials online for students. The participants studied possibilities for creating iBooks in order to present their research and make content available for their courses.

Vicki Crawford, director of the Morehouse College King Collection, discussed efforts to organize, preserve, and share the civil rights leader's writings and various other materials. Karcheik Sims-Alvarado -- founder of Preserve Black America, a research agency that seeks to identify and showcase African American history and culture -- discussed black histories of Atlanta, gave a tour of notable locations  in the city, and pointed out possibilities for utilizing digital technologies to enhance understanding of African American historic sites that have vanished over the decades. 

This institute was particularly important given the racial disparities concerning DH projects. For example, the National Endowment for the Humanities recently announced their latest round of  award recipients. Humanities scholars concentrating on African American topics were not represented among the approximately 28 DH-related projects that totaled more than $7 million. The recurring absence or exclusion of African Americans and black studies projects concerning DH could have long-term, troubling implications. Thus, an institute like the one Claiborne and Livingston organized serves as a vital intervention.

Related:
• Digital Humanities

Claiborne and Livingston Convene UNCF Mellon Technology Institute at Morehouse

S. Livingston and C. Claiborne

July 24 marked the opening day of an institute on technology use and digital humanities among HBCU scholars."Mapping the Future by Mining the Past" is a UNCF Mellon Summer Teaching & Learning Institute organized by Morehouse College scholars Corrie Claiborne and Samuel Livingston.

The participants include scholars from Claflin University, Dillard University (including poet Mona Lisa Saloy), Morehouse College, Paine College, and Spelman College. Over the course of three days, the scholars will discuss best practices in digital humanities (DH), utilizing iPads for DH work, digital resources, blogging, documenting digital works, and working with archives.

Mona Lisa Saloy's Red Beans and Ricely Yours

Mona Lisa Saloy's Red Beans and Ricely Yours (2005) is a special work in my collection. Jerry W. Ward, Jr., introduced me to Saloy many years ago, and I was pleased to add her volume to the larger mix. Many poets with books are at Predominantly White Institutions; however, Saloy is a professor at Dillard University, an HBCU in New Orleans.

    
Related:
• A Notebook on Book History

From Unforgivable Blackness and Samuel Jackson to The Big Smoke

Adrian Matejka's The Big Smoke (2013) is linked to two important sources -- Geoffrey C. Ward's Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004) and Ken Burns's illuminating documentary of the same name, which first aired on PBS in January 2005. For the Burns documentary, Samuel Jackson memorably presents the voice of Johnson, and it's often the sound of Jackson's rendering of the boxer that comes to mind as I read The Big Smoke.   
 

Related:
• A Notebook on Book History
• Adrian Matejka

James E. Cherry's books

I've enjoyed tracking some poets over the course of several years. In the case of James Cherry, I started reading his work in 2005, and I've kept track of his writings since that time. His books Bending the Blues (H&H Press, 2003), Honoring the Ancestors (Third World Press, 2008), and most recently Loose Change (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2013). 

Related:
• A Notebook on Book History
• Reading James E. Cherry
• Honoring the Ancestors

Ai's books & W. W. Norton & Company

The poet Ai, who died in 2010, began publishing in the 1970s, and in 1993, she gained a contract with W. W. Norton and Company, a move that would ensure that her poems reached an even wider audience. Her Norton books include: Greed (1993), Vice: New and Selected Poems (1999), Dread (2003), No Surrender (2010), and The Collected poems of Ai (2013).

Norton also published volumes by Rita Dove, Major Jackson, and A. Van Jordan. Speaking of poetry, in 2013, Norton published Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry edited by Charles Rowell. The company's most notable contribution to African American book history and production, though, is arguably the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, which is now in its third edition.

Related:
• A Notebook on Book History

James Smethurst and scholarship on the Black Arts Movement

James Smethurst's The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (2005) has been an invaluable resource for my own research and writings, and more important, his book stands as a vital history and examination of one of the most defining moments in black literary art and cultural organizing.

Smethurst's book is at the intersection of Black Arts texts and scholarship.   

I first met Smethurst at a Society for Textual Scholarship conference in New York City in 2001. I was a graduate student at the time. I was presenting research on editions of Richard Wright's autobiography, and Smethurst, who was on a panel William J. Harris and Richard Yarborough, was presenting on Black Arts. During his presentation, Smethurst mentioned in passing that he was working on a book on the Black Arts Movement, and later during the day, he and I discussed our shared interests on the subject.

Among other attributes, The Black Arts Movement serves as a connector to a wide range of Black arts texts and scholarly works.

Related: 
• James Smethurst's exceptionally thorough Black Arts Work
• Amiri Baraka was not what you could call a follower by James Smethurst 

Nikki Giovanni's book cover appearances

Nikki Giovanni remains a prominent figure in the worlds of poetry, and an indication of her popularity is evident from some of her book covers, which present her image.  Her publishers have been mindful that audiences are drawn to Giovanni, not just her poetry.

Related:
• A Notebook on Book History

Coverage of whether poetry matters

I've tracked some of the writings on whether poetry "can" and "does poetry matter." I've previously tracked the extended conversation about the so-called death of poetry. 

2014: Two State Poets Laureate Tell All (in Prose) - New York Times
2014: Is Poetry Dead? Not if 45 Official Laureates Are Any Indication - Jennifer Schuessler - New York Times
2014: Does Poetry Matter? - Room for Debate [multiple authors] - New York Times
2013: Making Poetry Matter - Edited by Sue Dymoke, Andrew Lambirth, Anthony Wilson - Bloomsbury Publishing 
2010: The New York Times asks, “Does Poetry Matter?” - Harriet Staff - Poetry
2010: Does Poetry Matter? - Gregory Cowles - New York Times
2010: This Land Is Our Land - David Biespiel - Poetry
2010:  Can Children’s Poetry Matter? - J. Patrick Lewis - Hunger Mountain
2009: Is poetry making a comeback?  - Richard Abowitz - Las Vegas Sun
2008: Review of Why poetry matters - William Palmer - The Independent
2008: Why Poetry Matters (Why X Matters Series) - Jay Parini - Yale University Press 
2002: Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture - Dana Gioia - Graywolf Press (paperback)
2000: Does poetry matter? - Multiple readers respond - BBC News
1997: Does Poetry Matter? - John Olson - The Raven Chronicles 
1997: Does Poetry Matter? The Culture of Poetry - Bart Baxter - The Raven Chronicles 
1993: Can Children's Poetry Matter? - Richard Flynn - The Lion and the Unicorn
1992: Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture - Dana Gioia - Graywolf Press
1991: Can Poetry Matter? - Dana Gioia - The Atlantic

Gary Jackson's Missing You, Metropolis & Jason McCall's Dear Hero,

Gary Jackson's Missing You, Metropolis (2010) and Jason McCall's Dear Hero, (2013) take on popular culture in ways that are uncommon among the 300 or so volumes of poetry in my collection. Both poets demonstrate their familiarity with comic books and popular culture, devoting poems to superheroes froms comic books and movies.

McCall's volume actually led me to Jackson. In a blurb on the back of Dear Hero, Cornelius Eady referenced Missing You, Metropolis, so after completing McCall's book, I got Jackson's as well. McCall covers approximately 100 kinds of heroes and villains in his book.   

In his poems, Jackson delves into the Marvel Universe, writing about Spider-Man, Gwen Stacey, Nightcrawler, Juggernaut, and others, and he also writes about characters from DC Comics, including Batman, Superman, and Lois Lane.

Ideally, these books signal what will become a new development in contemporary African American poetry where poets devote more attention to popular culture in their works. 

Related:
• A Notebook on Book History

A Notebook on Book History

2020

• December 23: Barack Obama's memoir by the numbers (so far)

2019
• April 20: Frederick Douglass and Alain Locke biographies awarded Pulitzer Prizes

2018
• July 27: Black movie heroes read Ta-Nehisi Coates
• March 30: A series on black book culture
            • African American students and bookstores
            • Black men, personal libraries, and Black Book Culture
            • Black book culture
            • Black bookstores in NYC: toward a history
            • Ben McFall -- Nearly 40 years at the Strand Bookstore
• January 19: Black fathers, African American literary studies, and special collections

2017
• July 2: Black books and recent selections for Common Reading programs

2016
• December 16: Kevin Young's Books: A Visual History  
• February 11: The Frederick Douglass books

2015
• November 9: Black Female Figures & Poetry Book Covers

2014
• September 27: The engaging reading practices of Tisha Brooks 
• September 25: Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Real Cool" & Poetry Magazine (1959) 
• September 19: Book History and Frederick Douglass's Narrative 
• August 4: The Connectivity of Allison Joseph's My Father's Kites
• August 2: Frank X. Walker's poetry books, including a sequel 
• August 1: Notes on Amiri Baraka's Low Coup  
• July 31: Select Graywolf Press Books by Black Writers, 2000 - 2013 
• July 30: The Size & Shape of Evie Shockley's books 
• July 29: Those Allison Joseph books
• July 28: Nikky Finney's Head Off & Split
• July 25: Mona Lisa Saloy's Red Beans and Ricely Yours
• July 23: From Unforgivable Blackness and Samuel Jackson to Adrian Matejka's The Big Smoke
• July 23: James E. Cherry's books
• July 22: Ai's books & W. W. Norton & Company
• July 21: James Smethurst and scholarship on the Black Arts Movement 
• July 21: Nikki Giovanni's book cover appearances 
• July 18: Gary Jackson's Missing You, Metropolis & Jason McCall's Dear Hero,
• July 17: The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader 
• July 16: Reading Marilyn Nelson this summer   
• July 4: Paul Green & Richard Wright's Native Son

2013
• September 21: Covers of Octavia Butler Patternist Series Novels
• September 2: Richard Wright Autobiography covers

2012
• June 12: Collected & Selected Works of Black Women Poets    
• June 12: The Collected Works (Readers) of Black Scholars 
• June 8: The Mis-Education of the Negro [Book Covers]

Natural Hair Anniversary: 14 months

Briana Whiteside

January 2014 & July 2014

14 months ago today, I did the big chop. Initially, the experience was very difficult, however, it has proven to be very rewarding. Since I big chopped, I have chronicled my progress on Pinterest, the Cultural Front blog, and become an unofficial advocate for natural hair.

My journey to obtain big and healthy hair has been a continuous effort to remain true to myself. With each month that passes, I am reminded of the progress that I’ve made and the growth that I’ve undergone.

Yet, I am still a bit self-conscious about my hair in the work place. Working in Corporate America with a natural fro still warrants uncomfortable stares. This reminds me that work still needs to be done.

Overall, going natural, or returning natural as some women say, has been rewarding. Aside from the versatility of the styles, and the changing textures of my hair, I am glad that I have become part of a larger community of dope women.

Today I am about 2 inches away from the length of my hair before I did the big chop. My hair is no longer growing upward or outward, but downward because of the weight.
  
Briana Whiteside is a graduate student  at the University of Alabama and a contributing writer for the Cultural Front.      

The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader

A month ago while I was in New York City, I purchased a first edition of Paul Green and Richard Wright's Native Son: A Play. I also acquired a first edition of The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader (1991) edited by William J. Harris. Years ago while taking a graduate course with Professor Harris at Pennsylvania State University, I got a revised paperback version of the Reader (1999)-- the first Baraka book that I owned.

Beginning at Penn State, I've collected several of Baraka's books over the years, including a few pamphlets that he produced. I'm looking forward to writing more about my Baraka books and collecting more.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr. was responsible for leading me into the worlds of Richard Wright, and William J. Harris was responsible for leading me into the worlds of Amiri Baraka. As a student at Tougaloo College, I took a course on Richard Wright with Professor Ward, and at Penn State with Professor Harris, I took: 1.) a course on Baraka, Ishmael Reed, and August Wilson; 2.) a course on the Black Arts Movement and; 3.) a course on free jazz, which culminated with a concert and symposium featuring a performance and lecture by Baraka.     

Related: 
• Amiri Baraka 

Reading Marilyn Nelson this summer

Earlier this summer and then again last week, I was reading Marilyn Nelson's newest book how I discovered poetry (2014). I really enjoyed it, as I have so much of her poetry over the years, including Carver, a Life in Poems (2001), A Wreath for Emmett Till (2005), and Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color (2007), which she co-wrote with Elizabeth Alexander.

Nelson's work was actually important to the directions my collection of contemporary poetry would take. Her book Carver served as a crucial connector, prompting me to search out various other related poets and works. I'm looking forward to reading and re-reading more of Nelson's volumes.

Related:
• A Notebook on Book History

Grant writing and the Teri/Patience Effect

By the time Teri Gulledge and Patience Graybill arrived in 2008, I was ready. I had been applying for research fellowships since my time in graduate school and since starting at SIUE in 2003. But I wanted to turn things up a notch by applying to large-scale humanities programming grants.

In order to go after those grants, I would need someone to guide me through some of the more complex terrains of budget forms. Fortunately for me, the Research and Projects Office in the graduate school at SIUE decided to hire a couple of navigators. 
 
In my pre-Teri/Patience years (2003 - 2007), I applied for 10 fellowships and grants -- a respectable number I thought. However, during the Teri/Patience days (2008 - present), I've applied for 22 grants. That jump was due in large part to the Teri/Patience Effect. Most notably, they removed what, for a literature scholar, could have become barriers (details of fringe benefit percentages, indirect costs, transportation mileage, etc). 

There's also the issue of motivation. Teri has a dry erase board on a wall in her office where she writes the names of faculty members, the grants they're applying for, and the deadlines. I don't like the feeling of not having my name on "Teri's deadline board," for it means that I don't have a grant in sight.

What's really significant, though, about having your name on that "deadline board" is that it means you're not the only one thinking about your grant or fellowship application. Once your name appears on that board, then at least two additional people are also thinking about how to raise the chances of your success.  

Related: 
• Humanities grants and the Graham Effect
• African American Literature @ SIUE

African American literary studies and intra-disciplinary differences

I've recently been working on a project concerning "black print culture studies," which inclined me to catch up on several articles in the area. In the process, I noticed a few notable distances between scholars who study 19th-century African American literature and those who study 20th-century African American literature. Although both groups would be defined as "African Americanists," their interests sometimes diverge in multiple ways.

They/we often pursue different kinds of training, attend different conferences, publish in different journals, highlight different artists, and sometimes use (and avoid) different terminology. Notwithstanding Henry Louis Gates, Jr., whose works are cited among almost all African Americanists, 19th-century and 20th-century scholars rely on different "leaders" in the field(s).   

A racial dynamic also appears to be at work. There seem to be more white African Americanists who publish and take leadership roles in 19th-century black literature in comparison to in 20th-century black literary studies. Why is that, I've wondered?

The recent publication of the third edition, now two-volume set of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (2014) corresponds to divisions in the field as well. Volume 1 of The Norton concentrates on literature from the 'beginnings' to the Harlem Renaissance. Volume 2 focuses on literature from 1940 to the present.

Over the last 10 years or so, English departments advertising jobs in the field have specified that they have openings for a 19th-century or 20th-century professor in African American literature. Those two time periods matter more than genre, major author specialties, and theoretical focus. Hiring in those two areas (19th-century and 20th-century) means that students of those hires will be inclined to study along those lines as well. 

Considering those developments, I sense that people in our field should have more conversations about intra-disciplinary differences and what those differences might mean for students, training, and publishing in African American literary studies. Literary scholars spend considerable time talking about the virtues of "interdisciplinary" work, which is points to the importance of literary scholars connecting to apparent non-literary fields. Yet the distance between 19th-century and 20th-century African Americanists exists and expands with little to no commentary.   

On the one hand, the distance reflects the growth and "success" of African American literary studies over the last few decades. At the same time, the distance signals a disconnect and consequences that deserve more of our attention.

Related:
• Notes on the Field of African American Literary Studies

Humanities grants and the Graham Effect

Talk about landing in the right place at the right time. In the Fall of 2003, I started at SIUE, where the graduate school was sharpening a support system for faculty to apply for external grants, and, at the same time, University of Kansas literature scholar Maryemma Graham began providing me with models and blueprints for humanities programming. That was 11 years and 30-plus grant applications ago.

Although I rarely say so in biographical sketches, "grant writer" is central to my identity as a scholar.  Maybe my success rate is not where I would like it to be, so I'm sometimes inclined to downplay my grant writing activities. Whatever the case, there's rarely...no, correction, there's never a moment when I'm not planning, contributing to, or implementing a humanities-related grant.       

Graduate students and scholars routinely apply for research fellowships, but Professor Graham was instrumental in  getting me to go for programming grants that served students, groups of citizens, and educators. As a contributor on Graham's projects, I gained experience applying for grants and implementing humanities activities. Not surprisingly, more than a few of my successful programs look like mini-versions of Graham's projects.

For example, early on in my career, Graham involved me in her NEH-funded program “Speaking of Rivers: Taking Poetry to the People," which involved 20 reading groups across the country. The groups or "reading circles," as they were called, received sets of free books by Langston Hughes. I was the East St. Louis coordinator, and like my counterparts in Baltimore, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and other cities, I led monthly discussions and activities related to  Hughes and poetry. That was 2004, and soon after, I was testing similar kinds of projects at SIUE and at high schools in southern Illinois and St. Louis, Missouri. For the last four years, I've coordinated 3 different common reading groups each semester using Graham's "reading circles" as a blueprint.

I recently received funding to coordinate a reading group, where 50 or so collegiate black men and I will  cover Adrian Matejka's The Big Smoke this coming Fall. The grant and current project are results, in part, of the Graham Effect.

Related:• Grant writing and the Teri/Patience Effect 
• African American Literature @ SIUE  

From Richard Wright to African American literary studies

In the past, I've mentioned taking a course on Richard Wright with Jerry W. Ward, Jr., during my second year of college at Tougaloo College. But I somehow neglected to highlight a notable point in my previous narratives. The Wright class was the first African American literature course that I ever took, though in that Tougaloo context, it was only a "literature" course.

These days, the typical approach, I assume, is for students to take a survey course on African American literature and then later take a "major author" course. At SIUE, we offer a 400-level major course on Toni Morrison, which I was inspired to create for my department based on my experiences in Professor Ward's Wright course all those years ago. By the time SIUE students arrive at the Morrison course, many of them have already taken general 200-level and 300-level literature courses. 

The situation I'm describing is not unique to African American literature. English majors at SIUE usually take survey and general literature courses prior to a major author course on Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Milton. The usual route into a literature major, it seems, is from the general to specific.

Thus, my entry into black literature through a single writer was unusual. Well, maybe not. Professors Ward, Maryemma Graham, Trudier Harris, and countless others began their own studies and careers on select black writers prior to the formation of "African American literature" as a distinct field and certainly before survey courses in the field were the norm.

I'll begin devoting more attention in conversations with colleagues and students to the issues of  major authors before survey courses and to surveys before major authors. 

Related:
• Richard Wright
• African American Literature @ SIUE

My Richard Wright library at a glance

Related:
• Richard Wright
• Richard Wright Autobiography covers

Paul Green & Richard Wright's Native Son

A couple of weeks ago, I was at Strand Bookstore in New York City. While perusing the rare books room, I came across a first edition of Paul Green and Richard Wright's Native Son: A Play -- an adaption of Wright's novel. Of course, I had to purchase it.

[Related: My Richard Wright library at glance]

I've been building my "Wright library" for 20 years now. I purchased Native Son in 1994-1995 during my senior year of high school. I purchased Black Boy during the summer of 1996, and took it with me to read while taking classes in France.

Octavia Butler’s Imago

By Briana Whiteside

The last book of the Xenogenesis series, Imago (1989), continues to examine the impact of governmental gene manipulations on humans. The humans who were not willing to mate with the Oankali aliens have gone to Mars—the new colony is 50 years old by now—and those who were willing to mate are still on Earth with the aliens. However, the Oankali have made several new discoveries, they have found a human colony that was still fertile and producing diseased children, and the Oankali have accidentally bred a human-construct ooloi.

In Dawn, the Oankali made all the humans sterile before sending them back to Earth, so that they would not destroy a new generation of people. In Adulthood Rites, a compromise was made to allow humans to reproduce if they wanted to on Mars, but they would have to start their new life from scratch. In both books, we see “the human contradiction” at work, and in Imago we see the Oankali’s mistake.

The Oankali believed that because “intelligence is relatively new to life on Earth” and “hierarchical tendencies are ancient…the new was often put at the service of the old.” The discovery of the diseased yet functioning breeding human colony created an alien contradiction.

And, their “accidental construct ooloi” Jodahs—who was born from a human mother Lilith—creates a larger contradiction for the Oankali. Butler writes, “nobody was ready for a construct ooloi.” Primarily, they were not ready for a complete version of an ooloi, one who could directly relate to humans and Oankali alike, but have “no flaw.”

In Imago, Butler critiques the governmental system and its representatives, both human and alien to expose its flaws. All behavior is governed by a system, and whatever system trains us, that is what we trust regardless of how poorly we are treated. Butler constructs a world created to protect, then divides it to highlight that even if systems are put into place for help, there must be another system to govern the system in place.

Briana Whiteside is a graduate student  at the University of Alabama and a contributing writer for the Cultural Front.      

Black Poetry: A Timeline, 1854 - 2014

 What follows is a partial, developing timeline on the histories of black poetry:

1854: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's volume of poetry Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects is published. 
1864: Frances E. W. Harper's poem "Bury Me in a Free Land" is published in Liberator, January 14.
1893: Paul Laurence Dunbar's first collection of poems Oak and Ivy is published.
1895: Alice Moore's Violets and other tales is published.
1896: Dunbar's Lyrics of Lowly Life are published.
1900: "Lift Every Voice and Sing," written by James Weldon Johnson, is performed for Booker T. Washington.
1905: John Johnson, brother of James Weldon Johnson, sets "Lift Every Voice and Sing" to music.
1913: Fenton Johnson's first volume A Little Dreaming is published.
1918: Georgia Douglas Johnson's The Heart of a Woman is published. "The Heart of a Woman."
1919: The NAACP adopts "Lift Every Voice and Sing" as "The Negro National Anthem."
1919: Claude McKay's "If We Must Die" is published in the July issue of Liberator. 
1921: Langston Hughes's "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is published in the June issue of The Crisis magazine.
1922: The Book of American Negro Poetry, edited by James Weldon Johnson, is published.
1923: Jean Toomer's Cane is published.
1925: The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke, is published.
1925: Countee Cullen's first volume Color is published.
1926: Langston Hughes's first volume The Weary Blues is published by Knopf.
1926: Langston Hughes's "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" appears in the June issue of The Nation. 
1932: Sterling A. Brown's Southern Road is published.
1937: Margaret Walker's "For My People" is published in the November 1937 issue of Poetry magazine.
1942: Margaret Walker's For My People,  recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets award, is published.
1945: Gwendolyn Brooks's A Street in Bronzeville is published by Harper & Row. 
1945: A version of Robert Hayden’s “Middle Passage” is published in the journal Phylon (Vol. 6, No. 3 3rd Qtr., 1945).
1945: Another version of Hayden’s “Middle Passage” is published in Cross Section 1945.
1947: Melvin B. Tolson named poet laureate of Liberia.
1950: Gwendolyn Brooks is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her volume Annie Allen (1949). 
1959: Gwendolyn Brooks's "We Real Cool" is published in the September issue of Poetry magazine.
1962: Third published version of Hayden’s “Middle Passage” is published in his volume A Ballad of Remembrance.

Charting $1.4 Million in awards, prizes for poets, 2000 - 2014

During the 21st century, large numbers of African American poets have been recipients of major literary awards, fellowships, prizes. I've previously documented some of the recognition, and now I decided to provide a monetary tally.

2000: Lucille Clifton wins the National Book Award for Poetry ($10,000).
2001: Yusef Komunyakaa awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize ($100,000).
2001: Sonia Sanchez is awarded the Robert Frost Medal ($2,500).
2001: Marilyn Nelson awarded Guggenheim Fellowship ($40,000)*.
2002: Elizabeth Alexander awarded Guggenheim Fellowship ($40,000).
2003: Natasha Trethewey awarded Guggenheim Fellowship  ($40,000).
2003: Kevin Young awarded Guggenheim Fellowship ($40,000).
2004: A. Van Jordan receives Whiting Writers' Award ($35,000)**.
2004: Toi Derricotte awarded Guggenheim Fellowship ($40,000).
2005: Harryette Mullen awarded Guggenheim Fellowship  ($40,000).
2005: Thomas Sayers Ellis receives Whiting Writers' Award ($35,000).
2005: Tracy K. Smith receives Whiting Writers' Award ($35,000).
2005: John Keene receives Whiting Writers' Award ($35,000).
2005: A. Van Jordan receives the Anisfield-Wolf Award ($10,000).
2006: Tyehimba Jess receives Whiting Writers' Award ($35,000).
2007: Lucille Clifton awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize ($100,000).

A timeline of support & critique concerning My Brother's Keeper

February 27: Obama announces My Brother’s Keeper’s Initiative. 

May 28: Group of 200 “concerned” black men, including Danny Glover , Robin Kelley, and Byron Hurt, among others, present letter urging Obama to include black girls and women in the Initiative

May 30: Presidential Task Force for My Brother’s Keeper releases 90-day Task Force report on Initiative.

June 2: Al Sharpton publishes article in support of My Brother’s Keeper in the Huffington Post.

June 13: The Black Women’s Roundtable, a civic engagement group, presented a letter in support of the Initiative and expressed disagreement with the letter from the “concerned” black men.

June 17: A group of 1,000 black women, including Alice Walker, Anita Hill, Mary Frances Berry, among others, present letter urging inclusion of black girls and women in Initiative

June 21: Dillard University President Walter M. Kimbrough publishes article entitled “Stop Writing Letters, Just do the work" in The Root.

June 29: National Women’s Leadership organization presents letter in support of My Brother’s Keeper.

Related:
• Coverage of My Brother's Keeper

Octavia Butler’s “Childfinder”

By Briana Whiteside

On June 24, 2014, the novella Unexpected Stories was released that contained two short stories written by Butler—“A Necessary Being” and “Childfinder.” “Childfinder” is about a back woman named Barbara who identifies pre-telepath children who have the potential to be fully active telepaths. The short story strongly corresponds to Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind, the first two books of the The Patternist Series.

Barabara is a childfinder, “somebody who could recognize normal-appearing kids who had psi potential before they got too old and the potential in them died from lack of use.” She has left “the organization”—a group of white people who collect and group active telepaths—and formed her own “black-only group” of pre-telelpaths.

Like Anyanwu, Barbara cared for those children who went through transition. Transition is a term used in Wild Seed to signal the period where characters obtained their powers and needed help getting back healthy.

In Mind of My Mind, the protagonist Mary creates a pattern of active telepaths and latents. Latents are the characters that missed transition and were deemed as unuseful. Mary helps usher them into late transitions, just as Barbara does to the people in her care. In turn, both Mary’s and Barbara’s followers give them loyalty and fuel the possibility of defeating any opposing force.

“Childfinder,” Mind of My Mind, and Wild Seed all present black women protagonists who are more for children than they do their own well-being. Butler’s creation of mystical superhuman characters, not simply strong black women, in speculative literature represents a distinctive construction of female heroism. And, the racial politics surrounding the defeats/and possible defeats of “the organization” and Doro important in understanding the power that Butler lends to her protagonist.

Briana Whiteside is a graduate student  at the University of Alabama and a contributing writer for the Cultural Front.     

Blogging about poetry in June 2014

[Related content: Blogging about Poetry]

• June 14: Contemporary black poetry and segregation
• June 9: Elevating Phenomenal Black Women poems
• June7: Michelle Obama as black woman poetry scholar
• June 4: Maya Angelou, Eugene B. Redmond, and me
• June 4: When did contemporary black poetry begin?
• June1: Blogging about poetry in May 2014