Black men writers and creativity, 1995 - 2016

I’ve been fortunate to read a wide range of exciting, scholarly, and imaginative writers over the years, too many to name, though I’ve been making small efforts here and there to document some of my reading and notations.

[Related update: The Greatest 30 Years of Black Men Writing]

Recently, I was giving some thought to the interrelated group of men writers whose works I’ve returned to somewhat frequently here on the blog or in my life of thinking, writing, and teaching offline.

After producing a timeline of what I viewed as arguably the greatest 25 years in African American women’s writing, I wanted to take a minute to chart out a different, more contemporary kind of timeline of writings by men who have captured my attention. Not all of these works fall in the category of “creative writing” but all these writers have done considerable work stimulating my mind.

Is this list comprehensive? Not at all. Just a partial record.


1995: Kevin Young publishes Most Way Home.
1996: Tony Medina publishes No Noose is Good Noose.
1996: Paul Beatty publishes The Whie Boy Shuffle.
1998: Tony Medina publishes Sermons from the Smell of a Carcass Condemned to Begging.
1998: Mark Anthony Neal publishes What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture.
1999: Colson Whitehead publishes The Intuitionist.
1999: Aaron McGruder launches syndicated comic strip, The Boondocks.
2000: Keith Knight publishes Fear of a Black Marker.
2000: Kevin Powell edits Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature.
2000: Malcolm Gladwell publishes The Tipping Point.
2000: Kevin Young edits Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers.
2001: Colson Whitehead publishes John Henry Days.
2001: Ta-Nehisi Coates publishes "The Last Angry Man."
2001: Kevin Young publishes To Repel Ghosts: Five Sides in B Minor.
2001: Cornelius Eady publishes Brutal Imagination.
2002: Mark Anthony Neal publishes Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic.
2003: Colson Whitehead publishes The Colossus of New York: A City in 13 Parts.
2003: Kevin Young edits Blues Poems.
2003: Aaron McGruder publishes A Right to be Hostile: A Boondocks Treasury.
2003: Amiri Baraka publishes Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems.
2004: Keith Knight publishes Red, White, Black & Blue: A (th)ink Anthology .
2004: Reginald Hudlin, Aaron McGruder, and Kyle Baker publish Birth of a Nation: A Comic Novel.
2004: Mark Anthony Neal co-edits with Murray Forman That's the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader.
2005: Kevin Young publishes Black Maria.

At 2003 reading, Baraka reflects on murders of his daughter and sister

Amiri Baraka at a reading in St. Louis, November 2003

I've taken a slight detour and been writing about gun violence. Since I usually write about poetry here, I've been drawing connections between the two: poetry and gun violence.

I just remembered that I was present as Amiri Baraka discussed how gun violence and a stabbing led to the deaths of important women in his life.  In 1984, Baraka's sister Kimako Baraka was stabbed to death in her apartment apparently by a 21-year-old. A little over two decades later in August 2003, Baraka's daughter Shani was shot to death.

In November 2003, I attended a reading that Baraka gave in St. Louis.

In his opening remarks, he said it was one of the first times he had given a reading in public since the shooting death of his daughter. I distinctly remember him discussing that he and his wife Amina were in so much pain after Shani's murder that they could hardly leave the house. In the course of those remarks, he mentioned the stabbing death of his sister Kimako. I was unaware of her murder at the time, but her name was quite familiar to me because I knew that Baraka and his wife referred to their home basement where they hosted readings and other performances as Kimako's Blues People.

In 2004, Amiri and Amina Baraka produced The Shani Project, an album of readings with accompanying music by Rahman Herbie Morgan, Dwight West, Brian Smith, and Vijay Iyer.

I was fortunate enough to catch Baraka reading many times over the course of about a decade and a half. In retrospect, the time I witnessed him at his most vulnerable moment was in November 2003 when he was discussing the murder of his daughter.

Related:
• A notebook on gun violence 

Fandom and literary studies

 

I came across André M. Carrington's Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction at the right time. Among other topics, Carrington focuses on fan culture, something that has been on my mind lately, especially after teaching a literature course on rap music this past semester.  Only two of the 45 students in the course were English majors. Everyone else was there in large part because they are rap fans.

My colleague Jessica DeSpain taught a course this past semester focusing on Harry Potter. Her students covered fan fiction, and of course prior to the course they had already read all the Harry Potter books and were linked to Harry Potter fandom. Like my students, DeSpain's students identities as fans drove their interest in the course.

Carrington opens his book by discussing the histories of race in speculative fiction fan culture. He covers the origins of Carl Brandon, a made-up black fan created by science fiction fans Terry Carr and Pete Graham in the mid-1950s.

Carrington's research reveals that fans in science fiction communities began wondering out loud what would happen if one of their members was black. At the time, the fans for the communities were communicating through newsletters and fanzines, having limited ways of knowing each others' actual identities. Those conditions created an opportunity for the nonexistent Brandon to gain attention from members of the prominent SF fan-group, Fantasy Amateur Press Association (FAPA). When the opportunity came to accept a black person into their group in the 1950s, "FAPA's elected officers responded with welcoming words for Brandon and affirmed their lack of prejudice" (48).

In his closing chapter, Carrington concentrates on fan fiction, in particular showing how participants extend their interest in African American characters from television shows and films. In 2004 or so, Carrington took over duties maintaining an online archive for a fanfic writer and editor he admired. The archive, entitled "Remember Us" was "the acknowledgement of that people of color are present throughout popular media and significant to many participants in media fandom" (201). Remember Us collected "fan fiction, artwork, and video that portray characters of color from popular media (television, film, comics and graphic novels, and print fiction) in primary and pivotal roles" (204).

In some ways, Carrington's efforts working in a distinct fan group made it possible for him to later produce the kind of scholarly work that he did. Similarly, the two literature courses that DeSpain and I offered this semester were dictated by the presence of fans in the classrooms. Considerations of how fandom shape how undergraduates engage intellectual and academic study deserve more of our attention. 

Related:
• Speculative Blackness by André M. Carrington 
• From Afrofuturism to Speculative Blackness
• Collegiate Students 

A notebook on gun violence

2019
• August 13: A tough summer of gun violence in St. Louis

2018
• September 4: St. Louis, Chicago, and American Violence statistics
• July 20: When black boys shoot black boys

2017
• September 29: Roberto Aspholm's discussion of black street gangs in Chicago
• August 7: Digital technologies, black pain, and its abstractions

2016
• July 31: Notes on the murders of three 16-year-old black boys in St. Louis 
• May 29: At 2003 reading, Baraka reflects on murders of his daughter and sister
• May 27: Gun violence, Black Lives Matter, and poetry 
• May 25: Tony Medina and bystander blues
• May 24: When will poets & literary scholars deal with gun violence?  
• May 24: Grasping for metaphors & similes while dealing with gun violence

The greatest 25 years in African American women's writing?

Somewhere out there in presentations, I've said that the greatest 10 years in African American literary history occurred from 1965 - 1976 -- so great that it refused to fit within a conventional 10-year frame. Alright, so today, I'm going to say that the greatest 25 years in African American women's writing has to be 1969 - 1994, right?

[Related: Black men writers and creativity, 1995 - 2016]

Ok, maybe you disagree. But for now, I'm providing a 60-entry timeline just to see what we have here.

1969: Maya Angelou publishes autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
1969: Lucille Clifton publishes Good Times.
1969: Carolyn Rodgers publishes "Black Poetry--Where It's At" appears in Negro Digest.
1969: Sonia Sanchez publishes Homecoming.
1970: Toni Morrison published The Bluest Eye.
1970: Alice Walker publishes The Third Life of Grange Copeland.
1970: Nikki Giovanni publishes Black Feeling, Black Talk/ Black Judgement.
1970: Mari Evans publishes I am a Black Woman.
1970: Sonia Sanchez publishes We a Baddddd People.
1970: Toni Cade Bambara edits and publishes The Black Woman: An Anthology.
1971: Jayne Cortez publishes Festivals and Funerals.
1971: Nikki Giovanni releases album Truth Is On Its Way with the New York Community Choir.
1972: Toni Cade Bambara publishes Gorilla, My Love.
1972: Sherley Anne Williams publishes Give Birth to Brightness: A Thematic Study in Neo-Black Literature.
1973: Toni Morrison publishes Sula.
1973: Nikki Giovanni publishes Ego-Tripping and Other Poems For Young People.
1974: Jayne Cortez releases album Celebrations & Solitudes: The Poetry of Jayne Cortez.
1974: Alice Walker publishes "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: The Creativity of Black Women in the South."
1974: Angela Davis publishes Angela Davis: An Autobiography
1975: Gayl Jones publishes Corregidora.
1975: Ntozake Shange publishes for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf.

Gun violence, Black Lives Matter, and poetry

The other day, over on Facebook, the poet-scholar Yao Glover asked "how is gun violence in the street not the same as Black Lives Matter?"

Black Lives Matter (BLM) apparently has a somewhat clear focus, responding primarily to police violence against unarmed black people. Although police brutality obviously often involves deadly shootings, there are apparently many more moving parts associated with gun violence in the streets. Here in St. Louis and other cities across the country, you frequently hear about shootings involving:

• gang disputes
• drug disputes
• domestic disputes
• carjackings
• robberies
• self-defense
• stray bullets
• accidents (i.e. smallest fingers on the trigger)

Activists associated with BLM often have clearly defined opposition: problematic police officers, police departments, district attorneys, or mayors. The vigils for people who have been murdered or community marches addressing gun violence are somewhat general, with chants like "Stop the violence."  

BLM rightly and nobly highlights the justified fears black people have with police officers. The fears people have with gun violence definitely includes but is hardly limited to police. Here, people are fearful about getting by stray bullets, by rival gangs, by a violent boyfriend, in a carjacking, and so forth. Many of the young guys will tell you that they got guns to protect themselves against the other young guys with guns.      

Yao, along with poet-scholars Tony Bolden, William J. Harris, and I have been having a long-ranging conversation or series of conversations about African American poetry and how audiences shape production and reception. I know it's a big stretch to link discussions of poetry with gun violence and BLM, but it does occur to me that audiences matter in important ways in all the cases. Here in St. Louis, for instance, the BLM protests attracted media, out-of-towners, white and black audiences in ways that the results of local violence rarely do.

Related:
• A notebook on gun violence 

From Afrofuturism to Speculative Blackness

Years ago as a graduate student, I became a participant in the yahoo list serv group Afrofuturism (AF) coordinated by Alondra Nelson. That group and the interactions from the many participants greatly assisted in deepening and expanding my interests in the interactions of race, technology, and science or speculative fiction.

Reading André M. Carrington's Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction (University of Minnesota Press, 2016) took me back and forward. His book had thinking about how much intellectual and cultural stimulation I gained by rolling with that AF group. I was thinking back on how that AF lens shaped my readings of Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead, Toni Morrison, and others.

Carrington covers Storm, Uhura, Benjamin Sisko, and Carl Brandon -- all topics that took me back to AF. But he also delves into fan culture of SF, all the online fiction communities, and Milestone Media in ways that were pushing me forward in new directions.  

Related:
• Speculative Blackness by André M. Carrington 
• Afrofuturism  

Comic books and moments of weirdness

A wonderful (weird to some?) moment in Chew where Tony Chu displays his cibopathic powers.

Received a good reminder about the value of embracing certain writing, even when it gets weird.

Last week in Oregon, I was talking comic books, among other a variety of other topics, with Courtney and Peter Thorsson. At one point I was talking about my sometimes frustration with the moment in a comic book series when things get weird or go too far out in strange directions.

Peter listened but graciously offered an alternative perspective. To make a long story short, he was reminding me that in some instances embracing moments of weirdness can coincide with a recognition that only some kinds of risks, storytelling, and visual presentations can take place in the space of comic books. In other words, what can comic books do that television shows, films, novels, rap music, and other modes cannot?

Good points. I'll keep it in mind, for sure. I'll want to get clearer too about what I'm reacting to when I label moments as weird and what others mean by that term.

And finally, prompted by those points, I began questioning whether I've done an adequate job introducing my students to enough moments of weirdness in the texts we cover in my African American literature courses. Not hardly. To the extent that my goals involve making them more aware of all kinds of wild creativity and artists moving beyond boundaries, I'll put some thought into pinpointing moments of weirdness in the works we cover.  

Related:
• A Notebook on comic books

Tony Medina and bystander blues

Given my recent discussion of searching for more poets and literary artists who deal with some of the immediate safety struggles in our communities, I'm looking forward to Tony Medina's next book. Over on Facebook, he mentioned a poem "One Guy Shot Another Guy" from his latest manuscript. It reads in part, "One guy shot another guy, and so he went and got a gun. He came back and shot at the guy that shot at him, but hit another guy instead."

The poem carries on about how conflict and gun violence escalates. But for now, the point about a guy shooting at one guy and yet hitting someone else instead is one too many of us in cities (St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee Baltimore, etc.) know all too well. In fact, just yesterday, I was mentioning an article from The Times about a shooting in Cincinnati. What happened? A couple of guys got into a fight, then went and got their guns, and bystanders got killed. 

Someone like Jaci Washington, whose brother was one of the innocent bystanders murdered at that Cincinnati gathering, will read the opening of Medina's poem and feel it. So will nearly all my students from Chicago. We'll note Medina touching on that gun violence bystander blues, and everyone will chime in with their own stories.

Remember that girl who was just sitting on her porch minding her own business? What about that older man who was working in his garden? What about that dude that just shot up into the crowd? That's the kind of talking that'll take place.

The bystander blues that Medina touches on would resonate with members of "Mothers of Murdered Children" and "Parents of Murdered Children," two groups whose chapters are active in Miami because of the large numbers of children who are killed there by stray bullets.

When it comes to the people's concerns and the poetry, Tony Medina, you gotta know, is always on the case. He's been based at Howard University in D.C. for years now. He's written extensively about police brutality, long before the Black Lives Movement. At the same time, he's also writing about the dangers and harm that takes place as tensions arise when, for instance, one guy "shot at the guy that shot at him, but hit another guy instead."

This bystander blues, as I'm calling it, is one subset of the larger topic of gun violence in various cities and communities. It took some poets more than a decade to catch up with Medina on police brutality. Let's hope it doesn't take that long for them to catch up with him addressing various other pressing issues as well.

Related:
• A notebook on gun violence 
• Tony Medina

When will poets & literary scholars deal with gun violence?

I live in St. Louis. For a while now, gun violence has been a problem. You know that from the news and from talking to people in the city. The majority of my African American students at SIUE are from Chicago, and they frequently talk to me about the dangers of gun violence in their cities.

One reason, among many, that the students sometimes sense a disconnect from the poets we cover in class concerns the absence of poems about the troubling conditions immediately affecting their neighborhoods. The students value that the poets write about history and celebrate aspects of black culture. But they also take note that the poets seem to rarely depict gangs, murder, gun violence , and a range of other problems.

It's not just poets. Literary scholars, for instance, hardly seemed concerned, at least in our published articles, with those issues that lead African Americans to feel unsafe in their neighborhoods. Will the rising murder rates in some cities, I wonder, lead prominent poets, novelists, and literary scholars to take up some of these issues a little more in their works? 

I suspect that spoken word poets and unpublished poets in struggling neighborhoods have been actively engaging these issues. Their works, however, rarely appear on course syllabi. It's perhaps also true that major publishers have shown less interest in publishing poets who address these issues.

Further, poets and literary scholars have relatively few models for adequately addressing contemporary concerns in struggling African American neighborhoods and communities. There are also socio-economic matters at work, whereby many leading poets reside outside the low-income neighborhoods that most affected by issues like crime, violence, mass incarceration, and so forth.

Despite all these things, I still wonder when and if poets and literary scholars will deal with issues like gun violence? What would it take and mean for writers to do more to address some of these topics, which occupy  substantial concerns for large numbers of African Americans?

Related:
• A notebook on gun violence 

Grasping for metaphors & similes while dealing with gun violence

Over the last few months, I've been having various conversations about metaphors with people, so an instance in a recent Times article about gun violence caught my attention. At one point in the article, the reporters mention a man who was killed by stray bullets at a gathering. The man's sister, Jaci Washington, attempts to describe what the murder means for her and her family:

She grasps for metaphors to capture the family’s loss. “It’s like the world crashing in. It’s like a nuclear bomb went off on my couch,” she said. “It’s like someone hit ‘pause’ in my life. I just saw him, and I will never see him again.”

I really felt for her and the family's loss. I also sensed that she was searching for just the right comparison so that the reporter and, by extension, we the readers might adequately understand her and her family's tremendous pain.

While the reporters for the article state that Ms. Washington "grasps for metaphors," the examples cited are similes. Her brother's murder is like the world crashing in; like a nuclear bomb; like someone hitting pause on her life.

I've spent considerable time on this site focusing on what poets do with words and language. However, maybe literary scholars and poets should also do more to consider what survivors of gun violence and the families of victims are doing. Their struggles to get us to understand what their pain and devastation is like deserve our attention.    

Related:
• A notebook on gun violence 
• Similes and metaphors in the Darren Wilson testimony

Understanding the uncommon reading program at the UO

I had the really good opportunity of talking about Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me recently at the University of Oregon (UO) with a diverse range of professors, staff members, and graduate students. Next semester, they will lead a common reading focused on Coates's book.  

At some point while preparing notes for my presentation, I mistakenly began referring to their common reading program as "the uncommon" reading program. Apparently a misreading on my part combined with my computer's overly active spellcheck led "UO common reading" becoming "Uncommon reading" in my notes.

There are no wrong notes, you sometimes hear the jazz folks say. Perhaps then, I'd find good sounds in the wrong not entirely accurate "uncommon" spelling I produced.

The good thing about my misreading was that it made me curious about what was uncommon about University of Oregon's reading program. Never mind that they in fact referred to it  as a "common" reading program. I was nonetheless searching for and identifying reasons why they were different than some of us with the standard, common reading programs.

Characteristics of an uncommon reading program:

• Early preparation -- UO was making plans for their fall program eight to nine months prior to launching the actual project. I heard about their reading project in February, which means they were giving themselves plenty of time to think through possibilities and outcomes. 

• Pre-program programming -- UO's Division of Undergraduate Studies and the university's Teaching Effectiveness Program have been coordinating workshops for those who will facilitate discussions of Coates's book. They held a reading discussion group of Between the World and Me on May 6 and more recently, on May 20, which is when I participated. They have additional workshops planned.

• Academic intervention -- In order to become more enticing to prospective students and to build school pride, universities across the country have been investing more and more resources into making sure that there are all kinds of fun, non-academic activities that occur at the beginning of each new school year.* Believe it or not, books that are introduced in the first week or even on the first day of official classes are arriving to students late in the process. Consequently, UO intervenes by making sure incoming students receive copies of common reading program books during summer orientation.

• A variety of book facilitators -- It's one thing to have a common reading program. It's something else, uncommon perhaps to bring a variety of faculty, staff, administrators, and graduate students together, on more than one occasion,  to talk about past experiences as well as potential opportunities and challenges for covering a particular book.    

• Genuine excitement -- The coordinators possess considerable excitement concerning their reading program. They feel think that adequate preparation, programming, diverse input, and engagement with the book will matter in the lives of participants. The enthusiasm among coordinators fuels the program.

Every semester, I run common reading projects. Moving forward, I plan to steal borrow some of the approaches from UO, raising the possibilities that my projects will include some of those uncommon characteristics.

--------
*Note: Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses by  Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa made me more aware of how universities increasingly foregrounded fun, non-academic activities at the beginning of the school year.

 Related:
• Notations for a common reading experience of Ta-Nehisi Coates

Speculative Blackness by André M. Carrington

Finally done with spring grading classes and committee duties, I have a little time to catch up on all the various books I'd been meaning to read during the semester. One of the works at the top of my list was André M. Carrington's Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). I enjoyed the book--a work that had my mind moving in multiple directions on the lines of SF, comic books, Star Trek, fandom, Afrofuturism, and on and on.

Speculative Blackness has chapters: on the histories of African Americans and someone passing as African American in science fiction fan groups; Nichelle Nichols who played Nyota Uhura in Star Trek; Storm (Ororo Munroe) from Marvel comics; African American comics company Milestone Media; Benjamin Sisko a character from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine portrayed by Avery Brooks; and online fan fiction with considerations of race.  

I was intrigued by several of the topics he covered. For one, his treatment of fandom and fan fiction was particularly useful. I've been thinking about the activities of fan culture for some time, and Carrington gave me multiple entry points to think even more. So often, we hear the use of "fanboy" dismissively, but Speculative Blackness highlights the histories of fandom, with an eye toward African Americans, and also the discussion of online fan fiction activities and sites.

Carrington's research and writing on comics and especially African American comic book characters are especially impressive. His knowledge coincided with my interests, so I found myself highly engaged with his chapters on Storm in the Marvel Universe and Milestone Media Company.    

Much of the formal work that we do in the field of African American literary studies concerning speculative fiction concentrates on Octavia Butler or say the "magical realism" in works by Toni Morrison. There's relatively little discussion of speculative fiction in fandom, shows like Star Trek, and comic books, all of which make Carrington's book important.

Related:
• From Afrofuturism to Speculative Blackness
• Books noted lists 

Variant covers for Black Panther #1

In the world of comic books, the publishers regularly coordinate the release of variant covers or variant editions, where a single issue of the book will have multiple covers by different artists. Collectors, especially those who are completists, are inclined to purchase all the variants, when and if possible. Collector-sellers are motivated to buy variants and sell them for high prices.

On the upside, it can be exciting to track down the variant covers, study the differing approaches of the artists, and talk with fellow enthusiasts about what we think about it all. Or at least that's how it's been with me so far.

[Related: The Sanford Greene Black Panther #1 variant cover]

Coates's Black Panther #1 was the first time I became interested in collecting variant covers. I declined to do so a little while back when variant issues of The Walking Dead #100 were published. There have been various other milestones with popular comics that I overlooked as well.  But I've been following Coates's career since 2005, which likely influenced my decision to collect variants for Black Panther.

In some ways, my collecting habits began in African American literary studies and especially with my work concerning Book History. Over the years, I acquired multiple editions of books by Octavia Butler, Frederick Douglass, and Richard Wright. Maybe my book collecting practices were priming me for this Coates comic.

I own about 14 variants of Black Panther. The covers, which I hope to write about in some detail a little later, present a range visual ideas with T'Challa, the protagonist of the comic book, as the basis. As a muse, the Black Panther clearly inspires a variety of creative possibilities among artists. 

Related:
• A Notebook on comic books
• A Notebook on Black Panther 
• A Notebook on the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates

Talking comic books, rap music, and African American literary studies

Good thing everyone was buckled in. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to have a wide-ranging, twisting and turning conversation about comic books, rap music, African American literature, and African American literary studies with the homegirl Courtney Thorsson -- a literary at the University of Oregon (UO) -- and her partner, Peter. It's not everyday that you get a block of time to talk through those fields like that.

Not sure where we began, but one early, opening discussion was this piece "Rapping, deconstructed: the best rhymers of all time" on Vox breaking down the science of rhyme patterns. From there we were off talking through the music in general. I'm fresh off this "Biggie, Jay Z, or Nas" course on rap, so my mind's been running. The article and conversation were giving me ideas for the next steps in the process of teaching on rap.

Ok, at some point or in between the talk on Nas and MF Doom and Outkast and ev'erybody else, we shifted to talking comics. Yeah, we talked Coates on the Black Panther. But we also talked comic bookstores, my pull list, the nature of comic books getting really weird, variant issues, the current Entertaining Comics exhibit at UO, and so forth.

Courtney and I teach African American literature, so, I suppose, we might as well say a little something about that. We did. But more important for me, we got a chance to talk about some of the places where the field is headed. And not.

I'm wondering now if some of the stagnation and barriers in the field are related to our inability to get more wide-ranging conversations like we were having yesterday. Just in case that's one of the problems, I'll try to keep conversing with folks, and I'll work to keep this place here lively and usefully scattered.  

Related:
• African American Literary Studies

"Meccas are multitudes": Tressie McMillan Cottom and HBCUs

One of the benefits of following a book like Between the World and Me that garners extensive commentary is that you come across several writers converging on a common subject and offering really, diverse thoughtful perspectives.

Among the more than 100 reviews I read on Coates's book, I was pleased to return, months later, to sociologist  Tressie McMillan Cottom's "The Untold Stories." Among other observations, she notes how her own experiences on a black college campus and the experiences of various other black women differed from the "lovely portrait of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs)" that Coates presents. While Coates primarily concentrates on the positive aspects of life on the campus of Howard University, which he refers to as "the Mecca," Cottom reminds us of other, more troubling experiences for a range of students. 

Citing a comprehensive report on sexual assault on the campuses of HBCUs, she notes that:

Women who reported not liking or feeling neutral about their HBCU were significantly more likely to report physically forced sexual-assault victimization. Whether you don’t report your rape because you love your HBCU or your rape taints your love for your HBCU, if you are a black woman assaulted in a mecca, you learn that love is complicated. You learn that on the Yard too, and in dorm rooms and cafeterias and in class and in libraries. The men who love you can hurt you. You learn that. You learn that the curiosity fomented in classrooms does not extend to men being curious about you, an actual woman. Unlike books, you talk back. Unlike female professors, you’re not supposed to talk back. The smart brothers may well be the most dangerous for you. The brothers reading Sonia Sanchez talk a game that feels like safety but their politics are for papers and polls, not dorms and wombs. Their violation can feel the worst because you expect it the least.

Part of what made Cottom's narrative so powerful to me was the extent that she offered an alternative to what Coates presents. She acknowledges that "Coates’s book is not about that and that is more than fine." So she pivots from Coates's book, or better, she used the occasion of all the attention on Between the World and Me to make us aware of silenced voices, or, as her title indicated, untold stories.

Her comments prompted me to reflect on the many outsiders at my own seemingly familial HBCU. I recalled and wondered about the many troubling incidents that were somehow erased. So often, in public, when those of us who attended HBCUs encounter each other in grad school at PWIs or in other white spaces, we become somewhat nostalgic about our beloved campuses. Our reflections most often include laughter, pride, and joy.  Like Coates, we love whatever "Mecca" we journeyed to and through.

But as Cottom reminds us at the end of her review, "Meccas are multitudes and no one story can tell their every story." Our laughter- and joy-filled reflections are also apparently forgetful. Or, were we simply unaware that sexual assault, silencing, homophobia, colorism, elitism, class politics, narrow definitions of beauty, and a range of social ills took place at our adored HBCUs?  


Anyway, returning to Between the World and Me recently led me back to important commentary like Tressie McMillan Cottom's "The Untold Stories."  

 Related:
• Notations for a common reading experience of Ta-Nehisi Coates
• A Notebook on the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates 

Critiques re: absence of black women in Between the World and Me

Early on, a series of comments and reviews from black women journalists and scholars offered critiques of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me because of the apparent lack of black women or concerns central to black women in the book.

In one review of the book on BuzzFeed, Shani O. Hilton wrote that "it’s with disappointment but not surprise that I report, having enjoyed Coates’ book, and read the reviews that have followed, that the black male experience is still used as a stand in for the black experience." Over at The Root in a review entitled "In Ta-Nehisi Coates’ New Book, It’s Clear All the Blacks Are Still Men," Britini Danielle details some of the ways that Between the World and Me downplays black women. At one point, Danielle notes that, "As I read Coates’ book, I couldn’t help wondering why black female writers aren’t lavished with the same level of pomp and circumstance given to black male writers who write about race—or hailed as the second coming of Baldwin."

In a review at Rewire, Josie Duffy acknowledges strengths of Coates's work: "Between the World and Me is an important book—perhaps the most important in a generation—on how race in this country functions." In addition though, she points out limits: "Still, I found myself searching for the Black woman experience in the pages;" and later, "Coates’ description of violence to the Black body does not do justice to the violence to which Black women are and have historically been subject."

I valued aspects of what Hilton, Danielle, Duffy, and others were saying about the absence of black women's perspectives, even as I was cautious about the ways that some of those commentators seemed to be (inadvertently) calling on Coates to be a spokesperson for all black people, men and women. One reason the book works the way that it does is because it is presumably comprised as a limited black father-son conversation. Maybe Coates should have offered more qualifiers alerting readers that he was not describing all black people's experiences, but who exactly doesn't know that this one guy is not the spokesperson?    

Having said that, I'm mindful about the frustrations and pain of feeling excluded. I also understand the legitimate concerns about the ways that mainstream, uncritical white media outlets have an ongoing tendency to elevate one black person at the expense or exclusion of so many others. 

Looking at some of those critiques now, I understand even more the intensity of such critiques. Few of us who had been following Coates and Coates himself had little idea that Between the World and Me would become so popular become a stand-in for all black perspectives, for so many audiences. I worry, though, about the anxiety we're surely to always be plagued with when and if we obsess so much about those who appear to seek out only one voice to understand all black people.   

Related:
• Notations for a common reading experience of Ta-Nehisi Coates
• A Notebook on the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates 

6 notable reviews of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me

My interest in tracking reception and coverage led me to collect and read more than 100 reviews and profiles concentrating on Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me. There's a lot of good, useful material there, but I wanted to provide a filtered list of some of the reviews I really enjoyed and benefited from reading and re-reading.

2016
• February 1: The Year of the Black Memoir - Imani Perry - Public Books -- The article covers a few different memoirs and provides insightful commentary on Coates's work. Perry's placement of Coates in the larger context of African American literature and her discussion of the limits of memoir are useful.  

2015  
• December 3: Loaded Dice - Thomas Chatterton Williams - London Review of Books -- A really extensive review that offers a summary of events shaping Coates's work. Williams also presents various "missteps"and over generalizations  in Coates's arguments. 

• August 17: Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘Between the World and Me’ - Michelle Alexander - New York Times -- Here, the noted author of The New Jim Crow offers one of the more thoughtful and measured reviews of Coates's book that I encountered.

• July 27: Between the World and Me Book Club: The Stories Untold - Tressie McMillan Cottom - The Atlantic -- This commentary on Coates's book crucially presents an alternative view of HBCUs that complements and counters the "lovely portrait" that appears in Between the World and Me. In particular, Cottom points out how HBCUs could be less than nurturing places for some black women.   

• July 23: Ta-Nehisi Coates's Wounded Attachment: Reflections on Between the World and Me - Melvin Rogers - Academic.edu -- An important review/critique that particularly addresses Coates's unwillingness to address the possibility of social agency.

• July 12: The Hard Truths of Ta-Nehisi Coates - Benjamin Wallace-Wells - New York Magazine -- A thorough and intriguing profile on Coates, published just before the official release of Between the World and Me. 

Related:
• Notations for a common reading experience of Ta-Nehisi Coates
• A Notebook on the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates 

18 Miles of Knowledge

Travelers Ashley and DaNaya look at books at the Strand

By Brittany Tuggle and Tiffany Tuggle

A book lover's fantasy lives on BROADWAY—at 828 BROADWAY to be exact wherein a lofty shop simply called "The Strand"—and it boasts a staggering 18 miles of books! The store itself contains multiple levels that showcases books of all genres. It is a store of wonders and fame for book lovers everywhere.

Being confronted with many levels of books of all kinds and sorts made it hard to figure out where to begin first. Being inside a bookstore of this caliber made our inner book aficionado jump for joy. We scrambled through the aisles of various categories littered throughout the wooden floors. We thumbed through the rare book sections, found vintage reads (which is not something often found back home). Watching the excited faces of our young fellow travelers turn the pages of a book they had chosen (and showing others a passage they enjoyed) was inspiring.

Small gifts from NYC 2016

Some of the small gifts we selected for Linda Jaworski-Moiles

So much of our trip to New York City was made possible by the efforts of our extraordinary office administrator Linda Jaworski-Moiles. She handled all the pre-trip arrangements (hotel and airline reservations, organization of funds, you name it). Of course, one of her more challenging, which she somehow accomplished was keeping me organized.

As one small token of our appreciation for Linda's kindness, our travelers picked up small souvenirs for her during our trip. We wanted to select things at nearly every stop along the way as acknowledgement that we thought of her throughout our trip.

Related:
• NYC 2016

Visiting McNally Jackson bookstore

 

I finally got a chance to visit McNally Jackson bookstore while I was in New York City. The store, which opened in 2004, is a really important cultural space in the city, hosting a wide range of author readings and activities over the years.  Bookstores, as I've noted over the years, have always been integral to my intellectual development, and McNally Jackson, I'm hoping will become a familiar place to visit on my trips to New York.

I only did some light browsing when I stopped by the other day. It was shortly after 10:00 am, when the store opened, so there were not many people. It's an aesthetically pleasing bookstore, with a small cafe and a book printing section.

A few images from NYC, 2016

[NYC 2016]

At the Strand

At the Schomburg

NYC 2016

Each May from 2009 - 2013, I coordinated trips to New York City with groups of SIUE students. I took a break in 2014, then took a group in 2015. Back in April 2015, I enlisted the services of my trusted colleagues Tisha Brooks, Elizabeth Cali, and Tori Walters, and we began brainstorming for what would become our May 2016 trip to the city.

We made our journey with 14 undergraduates and 3 graduate students. The trip gave our group opportunities to move beyond the Midwest. As we noted in one of our proposals

The project will have the broad impact of providing a group of underrepresented students with unique opportunities to participate in extracurricular education activities in one of the most culturally diverse and intellectually inventive cities in the world. This project complements our longstanding commitment to providing SIUE students with subject matter pertaining to African American literary and cultural studies. In addition, the project extends our use of innovative instruction methods to provide students with enriching learning opportunities beyond the conventional classroom context.

During our trip, we visited Harlem, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Srand Bookstore, the African Burial Ground, the Museum of New York City, Chinatown, and various other locations.

Entries:
• Ben McFall at the Strand
• 18 Miles of Knowledge by Brittany Tuggle and Tiffany Tuggle
• Visiting McNally Jackson bookstore
• Small gifts from NYC  
• A few images from NYC, 2016

Related:
• New York City Journeys

Ben McFall, the Strand, and NBF director Lisa Lucas

McFall trying to get work done as I snap his photo and talk

One the highlights with my visits to the Strand Bookstore in New York is catching up with my friend Ben McFall. He's the legendary 'oracle' of the fiction section at the bookstore.

We usually talk travel, national events, various thises and thats, and of course book news. We were talking this time, for instance, about the appointment of Lisa Lucas as the executive director of the National Book Foundation (NBF). Any discussion of the Foundation and now Lucas's appointment certainly caught my attention, especially since I've bee tracking NBF award-winning African American poets.

• African American finalists: National Book Award for Poetry, 1990-2015
• Robin Coste Lewis, Black poets & the National Book Award

I look forward to following the projects that Lucas will expand on and create at the Foundation. Mr. McFall was definitely excited about her appointment as well as the fact that an executive director of the NBF visits the Strand. It's a positive sign, we were noting, that beyond her prominent position, Lucas is just like us: a reader who enjoys good bookstores.      

Related:
• Bookstores and special collections

Ta-Nehisi Coates's audiences of black boys and young black men

We probably haven't heard enough about the audiences of black boys and young black men in the coverage of Ta-Nehisi Coates's works. But they're here. At least in my world they are.

Some years back, in my course for first-year black men, we covered Coates's The Beautiful Struggle (2008). The guys enjoyed the book, especially the ways Coates highlighted the importance of rap as well as his discussions of the challenges navigating a tough neighborhood. The majority of my students were and are from the South Side of Chicago; what Coates described about Baltimore reminded my guys of their own environments.

When one of the high school teachers from East St. Louis that I collaborate with asked me about book suggestions, I talked about the experience of covering Coates's memoir with my guys. The teacher assigned The Beautiful Struggle for a reading group at his school, which is how many of the boys first became aware of Coates. When I'd visit for after-school activities, the high school guys were always engaging me in conversations about Coates, about his discussions of rap music and the ways his Baltimore experience resembled their East St. Louis experiences.

Coates autographs The Beautiful Struggle for my student Dometi Pongo at SIUE, March 2011.

Over the last couple of years, I gave my first-year guys activities related to the coverage of Trayvon Martin produced by Coates and Trymaine Lee. My students from 4 years ago thought of Coates as the writer of a memoir; my more recent guys were now thinking of Coates primarily as a blogger. Many of those more recent guys were the exact same age as Martin, so they were deeply invested in the coverage that Coates and Lee provided.

Last fall, I coordinated a reading group focused on Coates's Between the World and Me (2015) with collegiate black men at the university. More than anything, Coates was giving the guys a vocabulary to discuss their worries about the vulnerabilities of their own black bodies. Some of the guys were also interested in Coates's movements--from Baltimore to Howard University to New York City to Paris. I prompted them to also consider his movements as a writer -- from aspiring rapper to poet to journalist to memoir author to blogger/journalist to prominent commentator on race in America.

These days, I've been following along with Coates's The Black Panther. I can hardly wait until the release of the trade paperback, which will make it possible for me to assign the book in the classes for my first-year guys and for a reading group for the comic book fans at the high school in East St. Louis where I volunteer. I've heard the debates concerning "who is Coates writing for?" In the world where I teach, he's been producing an engaging body of work for black boys and young black men.

Related:
• Notations for a common reading experience of Ta-Nehisi Coates
• A Notebook on the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates 

Women's Work, Between the World and Me & accumulated knowledge

Later this week, I'm giving a presentation on Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, and since the presentation is taking place at the University of Oregon (UO), I couldn't help but think about this book Women's Work: Nationalism and Contemporary African American Women's Novels (2013) by the homegirl Courtney Thorsson. She's been holding things down at UO, and I've written about her book a few different times here. 

While Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Toni Cade Bambara, and others constitute the focal points of Thorsson's book, I noticed that she also charts this rich body of accumulated knowledge and scholarly work among black women thinkers over the years. Aspects of that knowledge and scholarly work are quite apparent in the citations and footnotes throughout the book.

Coates's book is also the result of a range of accumulated knowledge, if from different sources. For one, prior to the publication of Between the World and Me, Coates produced a few thousand blog entries at The Atlantic since 2008. His book represents a glimpse of the many topics he covered.

In addition, after completing an extensive index of Between the World and Me with my graduate student Cynthia Campbell this semester, I became more keenly aware of how many sources and accumulated knowledge in African American studies, broadly defined. Coates references dozens and dozens of black artists and thinkers; he cites key locales and concepts; he makes connections across black histories and cultural ideas.  

The experiences of Thorsson's Women's Work and Coates's Between the World and Me prompted me to read and re-read a variety of other writers and works.

Related:
• A Notebook on work by Courtney Thorsson
• Notations for a common reading experience of Ta-Nehisi Coates
• A Notebook on the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates 

Sharing resources on Between the World and Me

One of the challenges I initially had when thinking about what to present during my upcoming presentation on Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me at the University of Oregon (UO) was how to share all the materials I've gotten in a single presentation. Too many items and too much to say, not enough time.

The audience for my presentation are professors who will lead a common reading on Coates's book for first-year students. I've decided to provide each of them with flash drives that contain a wide range of resources related to my research on Between the World and Me. The drives will contain my extensive list of coverage of the book; timelines related to Coates and his work; a keywords and concept document; and a few different indexes that I produced concerning the book.

Hopefully, the items I provide will complement what the professors are planning to share with students as they facilitate their various reading groups.

I've been consistently following Coates's writing now since around 2005. Over time, I've gathered way too much to say in a limited time-frame. Therefore, I'm hoping that keeping my presentation relatively short, but providing the audience with a body of resources that they can access on their own time and for the purposes that they choose will be most beneficial for them and ultimately their students.
 
Related:
• Notations for a common reading experience of Ta-Nehisi Coates
• A Notebook on the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates  

African American Poets and Academic Appointments

Here's a partial list of academic appointments of African American poets. 

• Elizabeth Alexander, Columbia University, Department of English and Comparative Literature 
• Bro. Yao (Hoke S. Glover III), Bowie State University, Department of English and Modern Languages 
• Jericho Brown, Emory University, English and Creative Writing
• Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Cornell University, Department of English
• Cyrus Cassells, Texas State University, Department of English
• Kyle Dargan, American University, Department of Literature
• Toi Derricotte University of Pittsburgh, Emeritus Professor, Department of English
• Rita Dove, University of Virginia, Commonwealth Professor, Department of English
• Camille Dungy, Colorada State University, Department of English
• Cornelius Eady, SUNY Stony Brook Southampton, MFA faculty
• Kelly Norman Ellis, Chicago State University, MFA in Creative Writing
• Nikky Finney, University of South Carolina, Department of Language and Literature 
• Reginald Flood, Eastern Connecticut State University, Department of English
• Calvin Forbes, School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Writing Program
• Ross Gay, Indiana University, Creative Writing, Department of English
• Nikki Giovanni, Virginia Tech, Department of English
• Cecil S. Giscombe, University of California, Berkeley, Department of English

The pre-publication of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead's next novel, entitled The Underground Railroad, will be published on September 13, August 2, 2016. That seems like a while from now, but his publisher Doubleday and book industry commentators have already been subtly getting the word out about the book.

The publication of Whitehead's novel in the fall, widely known as an important season within the book publishing industry, signals his high value to Doubleday. Whereas I usually publish my "coverage of" a little closer to the upcoming release dates of books, I decided to post my tracking of Whitehead's novel 7 months prior to the release of The Underground Railroad. For one, I want to highlight some of the extensive pre-publication coverage for a major African American author for some of my readers. In addition, I wanted to make aspects of my own approaches to how I follow the roll-out of one of my favorite writer's new books.


Mentions:
2016
• July 22: The Underground Railroad, Literally Underground - Diane Patrick - Publishers Weekly
• May 17: 10 Great Galleys From BookExpo America 2016 - Boris Kachka - Vulture
• May 13: Colson Whitehead on The Underground Railroad | Book Expo America 2016 - Book View Now - Jeffrey Brown
• May 12: BEA 2016: A Rather 'Adult' Adult Breakfast - Judith Rosen - Publishers Weekly 
• May 12: BEA 2016: Books by Whitehead, Patchett Among Show’s Biggest - Louisa Ermelino - Publishers Weekly
• May 12: Tough talk on slavery, politics at BookExpo - Jocelyn McClurg - USA Today
• April 13: The Underground Railroad - Kirkus Reviews  
• April 10: The Underground Railroad - Publishers Weekly
• January 28: 23 of the most anticipated books of 2016 - Paul S. Makishima  - Boston Globe
• January 24: Writer Colson Whitehead keeps breaking boundaries - Tirdad Derakhshani - Philadelphia Inquirer 
• January 5: The 50 Most Anticipated Books of 2016 -  Jonathon Sturgeon - Flavor Wire


2015
• December 30: 25 books we can't wait to read in 2016 - Isabella Biedenharn and Tina Jordan - Entertainment Weekly
• December 29: The Year Ahead for Readers - John Williams - New York Times

Whitehead's tweets announcing The Underground Railroad: 
2016
• January 15: "The Underground Railroad" gets a cover

2015
• November 25: Fall 2016

Related:
• Colson Whitehead

Books notes (rap music & hip hop)

The discourse on rap music and hip hop culture is incredibly expansive and growing. Mentioning 10 books or even 20 or 30 hardly seems like enough. But hey, I was asked to name just a few books that I'd recommend or that I've been interested in re-reading. The following 5 came to mind.  

• Tricia Rose's Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994) -- A classic. Rose's book offers one of the earliest, extensive scholarly treatments of the music and culture. 

• Jay Z's Decoded (2010) -- Co-written with dream hampton, this book is part memoir, part lyrics annotation book. In addition to offering useful narrative points, the book is visually compelling as well. 

• Adam Bradley's Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop (2009) -- He offers an accessible yet complex read on the stylistic and literary components of the music.

• Dan Charnas's The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip Hop (2010) -- This extensive work is the first book-length treatment I've encountered that takes a careful look at the actual business of rap.

• Tricia Rose's The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop--and Why It Matters (2008) -- I really appreciate the way this book presents popular arguments concerning rap and hip hop, offering takes on the strengths and limits of those arguments. 

Related:
• Books noted lists  

Books noted (poetry #1)

I've read, re-read, and blogged about a large number of poetry volumes over the years, so trying to pinpoint just a few that I would recommend is tough. Nonetheless, to get started, I'd mention the following works, which I've found myself returning to and references on many occasions. Clearly, this list is not exhaustive.

• Adrian Matejka’s The Big Smoke (2013) -- A collection of persona poems written primarily from the perspective of the first black heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Johnson. Given my interests in representations of bad men, I find myself frequently come back to this volume by Matejka. [Reading group on The Big Smoke.]

• Elizabeth Alexander's Crave Radiance (2010) -- I've followed Alexander's writing and career for quite some time. This collection brings all her volumes of poetry together.

• Evie Shockley’s the new black (2008) -- A really inventive book by a thoughtful, engaging poet. This book was inspiring and challenging in useful ways.

• Kevin Young’s Dear Darkness (2008) -- He's produced so many solid, enjoyable works. His interest in the blues, humor, the South, southern cuisine, and family emerge here in notable ways.    

• Tyehimba Jess's Leadbelly (2005) -- What Jess does here is narrate and re-create the journey of the legendary folk musician Huddie Ledbetter. It's hard to think of a single volume that has done more to set me on my way thinking about bad men, persona poems, and the convergence of poetry and music.

Related:
• Books noted lists