Sunday, May 29, 2016

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.

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.
2005: Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks television series premiers.
2005: Tyehimba Jess publishes Leadbelly.
2005: Malcolm Gladwell publishes Blink: the power of thinking without thinking.
2006: Kevin Young edits Jazz Poems.
2006: Amiri Baraka publishes Tales of the Out & the Gone.
2006: Edward P. Jones publishes All Aunt Hagar's Children.  
2006: Reginald Hudlin and John Romita publish Black Panther Vol. 1: Who Is The Black Panther.
2007: Keith Knight publishes Are We Feeling Safer Yet?: A (th)ink Anthology.
2008: Ta-Nehisi Coates publishes The Beautiful Struggle.
2008: Kevin Young publishes Dear Darkness.
2008: Kyle Baker publishes Nat Turner.
2008: Malcolm Gladwell publishes Outliers.
2008: Ta-Nehisi Coates publishes "‘This Is How We Lost to the White Man.’"
2009: Colson Whitehead publishes Sag Harbor.
2009: Malcolm Gladwell publishes What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures.
2009: Adam Bradley publishes Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop.
2010: Jay Z publishes Decoded.
2011: Mat Johnson publishes Pym
2011: Kevin Young publishes Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels.
2011: Tony Medina publishes Broke on Ice.
2012: Kevin Young publishes The Grey Album.
2012: Colson Whitehead publishes Zone One.
2012: Kevin Young co-edits The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010.
2012: Colson Whitehead publishes "A Psychotronic Childhood: Learning from B-movies."
2012: Ta-Nehisi Coates publishes "Fear of a Black President."
2012: Reginald Flood publishes Coffle.
2013: Tony Medina publishes Broke Baroque.
2013: Mark Anthony Neal publishes Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities.
2013: Adrian Matejka publishes The Big Smoke.
2013: Malcolm Gladwell publishes David and Goliath.
2013: Reginald Harris publishes Autogeography.
2013: Jason McCall publishes Dear Hero,.
2014: Ta-Nehisi Coates publishes “The Case for Reparations.”
2014: S O S: Poems 1961-2013 by Amiri Baraka is published posthumously.
2015: Ta-Nehisi Coates publishes Between the World and Me.
2015: John Keene publishes Counternarratives.
2015: Paul Beatty publishes The Sellout.
2016: Ta-Nehisi Coates publishes The Black Panther #1 - 9.
2016: Tyehimba Jess publishes Olio.
2016: Kevin Young publishes Blue Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1995-2015.
2016: Colson Whitehead publishes The Underground Railroad (August 2); Oprah Book Club selection.

Related:
Timelines
Books noted lists    
A checklist of book lists

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