Are Black women and girls allowed the space to be introverts?

By Lakenzie Walls

In my last entry, Belonging: The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, I stated, “being an introvert as a black girl when the world views black as cool isn’t easy.” I want to return to this point in this post and explore the ways black women and girls feel out of place among each other.

However, being black can sometimes feel synonymous with cool, so being anything other than cool places you in a liminal space where your otherness becomes more visible. I think the media makes it hard for black women and girls to have anything other than a strong and larger-than-life personality. One of the things that made Rae’s The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl YouTube series stand out is the show’s unique way of dismantling that stereotype and showcasing an introverted black woman.

Besides, I am aware that it’s important to showcase these images because it allows for a community of black women and girls to feel seen and not feel alone. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to black womanhood or girlhood.

When it comes down to it, I think we should allow black girls the space to be introverted without ascribing scripts to their bodies or blackness. If we don’t, we’ll further set apart someone because they don’t fit into what we believe black women and girls to be.

I once believed my introversion was a sign of weakness and something that needed to be changed if I wanted to appear strong-willed. I don’t have to be extroverted to have friends either. But, it’s important that I see representation of me on screen because people like me exist too.

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

Kristin Jacobson's The American Adrenaline Narrative

The last couple of days, I've been reading Kristin Jacobson's The American Adrenaline Narrative (University of Georgia Press, 2020). She describes adrenaline narratives as writings or other productions about "perilous outdoor adventures." These narratives:

include adventures in a remote natural setting involving water (rafting, kayaking, deep-sea diving, surfing), including ice (polar explorations), and land/air (mountaineering, rock climbing, base jumping, wingsuit flying, sky diving, backcountry skiing). They also include expeditions involving long-distance endurance (running, biking, hiking, swimming) as well as outdoor survival or "alone in the wilderness (16).     

I'm only a couple of chapters in, and I'm learning so much about the elements of these narratives. It's funny too because I've been surrounded, we've all been surrounded by adrenaline narratives or bits and pieces of them. But this book is just making me more aware of it.

Jacobson and I were in graduate school together at English at Pennsylvania State University many years ago. We were part of a large community of emerging scholars talking about all kinds of topics related to literature, culture, and history. It turns out that even back then she was thinking about adrenaline narratives, as she came up with the concept and published an article "Desiring Natures: The American Adrenaline Narrative" in Genre in 2002, when we were still students.

A few years back on social media, I recall that she was posting pieces on what I now recognize as part of adrenaline narratives. She was likely deep into her research and writing for this book at that time.

The words "risk" and "risky" continually come up in what I've been reading so far in the book, which might be expected in a look at adrenaline narratives. At one point Jacobson notes that "the attempt to understand the desires related to radical, risky acts like climbing to 29,092 feet as well as the everyday participation in and fascination with extreme lifestyles lies at the heart of this book" (2). Later, she writes that "While mountaineering and hiking remain key sports in post-1970s extreme adventures, other risk landscapes and sports also come to the fore" (7).

Then at another point, she writes that "the fascination with extreme risk in American culture may also be a byproduct of living in a relatively risk-free modern society" (11).

Beyond the materials discussed in the book, I've been thinking about what it means to identify and define a genre or type of writing the way that Jacobson is doing here. Even early on, it's evident that she has been reading deeply and widely on the subject in order to come to terms what adrenaline narratives are and are not.

 I'm not taking any risks by climbing mountains or sky diving at the moment. But I'm now quite interested in what's going on with adrenaline narratives.

An enriching Amiri Baraka creative critical domain

Among other things, James Smethurst's Brick City Vanguard represents the power of a rich creative critical domain focusing on an black author, in this case Amiri Baraka. Smethurst opens his book noting that he's building on previous Baraka scholarship by William J. Harris, Aldon Nielsen, Meta Du Ewa Jones, Fred Moten, Carter Mathes, Nathaniel Mackey, Kathy Lou Schultz, Tony Bolden, Werner Sollors, Kimberly Benston, Jean-Phillipe Marcoux, and Lorenzo Thomas. And Smethurst then adds "to name a relative few."

Further,  Baraka's autobiography, interviews with Amini Baraka, histories of Newark, a review of Baraka's Blues People by Ralph Ellison, and more items all contributed as well to the nature of this enriching Amiri Baraka creative critical domain.

I can think of many writers that I admire and would love to see as subjects of books like Smethurst's Brick City Vanguard. But not many writers have the kind of expansive, dynamic body of critical works on them that Baraka has. We're talking about a discourse and creative domain that has been ongoing and developing for more than fifty years.

The expansive nature of Baraka-related items makes the realm both wonderful and intimidating. It wasn't easy, I'd imagine, for Smethurst to make his way through so much of it. But I'm glad he took the time, as it pays off in the production of a work that further enriches the domain.

Related:
• A notebook on the work of James Smethurst

A notebook on the work of James Smethurst

Here's a roundup of pieces on the scholar James Smethurst, as one entry he contributed to the site.

2020
• May 1: More on James Smethurst's Amiri Baraka book
• April 26: An enriching Amiri Baraka creative critical domain
• April 25: James Smethurst releases book on Amiri Baraka

2014
• November 3: James Smethurst, SOS, and the continuity of black arts scholarship

• July 21: James Smethurst and scholarship on the Black Arts Movement

• January 11: Amiri Baraka was not what you could call a follower by James Smethurst

2012
• August 4: James Smethurst's exceptionally thorough Black Arts Work

James Smethurst releases book on Amiri Baraka

I just started James Smethurst's newest book, Brick City Vanguard: Amiri Baraka, Black Music, Black Modernity (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020). I'm only a chapter or so in, and I'm learning quite a bit.

Early on, Smethurst notes that

"The focus here...is considering how Baraka's writing on and actual performance with music proposes an influential model of the creation of an African American people or nation, and the growth and consolidation of a black working class within that nation with important ties with other working-class sectors outside the black nation" (2). 

What I'm particularly interested in is how Smethurst takes up a socio-economic lens, particularly Marxism, as a central force in Baraka's life and work. Too often, too many of us have noted Baraka's Marxism as a kind of tag on or side point. But Smethurst doesn't play that.

"I make the argument," writes Smethurst in the introduction, "that Baraka is the author of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, body of Marxist thinking about U.S. culture, particularly music, in the history of the United States" (14-15).

Smethurst has studied Baraka for decades. He's examined Baraka's expansive body of work, and done interviews with him as well as Baraka's wife Amina.  Speaking of which, Smethurst does vital work in chapter one of reminding some and making many of us aware of how important Amini Baraka was to Amiri's overall outlook and progressive movements.

I've always known that Amiri Baraka was linked to Newark, but Smethurst's opening chapter gives me a more expansive view of the city than I had previously considered. He also describes why the city was such a crucial site for the production of black music. What he's done here in the research and writing is really important. 

I'm looking forward to finishing the book up, and learning even more.

Related:
• Amiri Baraka was not what you could call a follower by James Smethurst
• Amiri Baraka
• A notebook on the work of James Smethurst

Black Magnolias special issue on Prince

C. Liegh McInnis just published a special issue of Black Magnolias -- this one on the "artistry and life" of Prince. I've already started digging in.

Over twenty years ago when I was a student at Tougaloo College, someone made me aware of McInnis as a local writer in Jackson, Mississippi. Early on, I was told that he was a poet and writing a book about Prince. I knew many poets, but someone knowledgeable -- beyond the level of typical fan -- about Prince and writing about the music was new to me.

So of course, I felt like I was connecting dots when I saw McInnis opening the special issue on Prince with a quotation from Amiri Baraka's Blues People (1963). With that work, Baraka advanced the field of ethnomusicology, though folks weren't using that term much back then. The work on and around Prince that McInnis has been doing over the decades operates in the realm of black music studies. That means a realm that overlaps with black history and culture, but also with narratives about creativity, entertainment history, and more.

This special issue on Prince includes essays by RaShell Smith-Spears, William Armstrong, Michael A. Gonzales, hele j. crump, De Angela L. Duff, Satchel Page, Robert Loss, James E. Cherry, Darryl Pete, Monica Flippin Wynn and Preselfannie E. Whitfield McDaniels, Gabrielle Anderson, Jerry W. Ward, Jr., and McInnis.

"With a collection of scholars from various discipline, this special issue," writes McInnis in the introduction, "tracks and attempts to analyze the meanings and transitions of Prince's lyrical work, musical progression, and fashion, taking into consideration that, to explore thoroughly Prince, one must realize his lyrics are but a particle of the interwoven package of music, fashion, and mythology that is Prince."

The special issue cover art by Monica Taylor-McInnis, by the way, deserves some mention. A collage of Prince photographs are situated within an image of the African continent. Like many major pop icons of his stature, Prince is sometimes positioned beyond race and history. But not here.

The cover prompts us to think of Prince in the context of black history and culture. The presentation of those several photographs encourages a consideration of the musician's multiplicity. 

Related
• C. Liegh McInnis

From Richard Wright to Octavia Butler

For years, I collected editions and reprints of Richard Wright's Black Boy. I eventually decided to branch out and develop other collections of a single book or author. That's how I ended up with several books by Octavia Butler. She was a science fiction writer, so designers for her covers stretched out in all kinds of creative ways.

Butler's publishers also offered interrelated designs of the various books. So the novels look like a cohesive collection on the shelf.

The Patternist series, which is how I first got into Butler's works, have some really interesting covers. I've blogged on them a bit over the years. I also organized osme public displays focusing on the covers.

You have to do a deep dive to get all the Patternist books though. Butler declined to have her novel Survivor reprinted, because she decided she did not like it.

Then, there's Kindred, perhaps Butler's most well-known novel. There have been a few different covers of that work. And recently, there was even a graphic novel adaptation.

Funny how Wright got me to Butler covers, and also to Frederick Douglass and Black Panther #1.

Related:
• A Notebook on Richard Wright & Book History

From Richard Wright to Frederick Douglass

Narrative covers

After years of collecting covers of Richard Wright's autobiography Black Boy, I was inclined to think about other books as well that had multiple editions. Wright led me to Frederick Douglass. I ended up amassing a large collection of editions of Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which was originally published in 1845.

Since 1960, there have been multiple editions of Douglass's book printed. I have a collection of well over 50 different editions.

So Wright led me to Douglass, but also to Octavia Butler and Black Panther #1.

Related:
• A Notebook on Richard Wright & Book History

Prices for Richard Wright's Black Boy

In my studies of different versions of Richard Wright's Boy Boy, I began taking note of the original prices. Here's a rundown.

1945: Harper and Brothers (hardcover): $2.50
1951: Signet (paperback): $0.25
1963: Signet (paperback): $0.75
1966: Perennial Classic (paperback): $0.95
1970s: Perennial Classic (paperback): $3.95
1989: Perennial Library, Harper & Row (paperback): $6.00
1991: Library of America (hardcover): $31.50
1993: HarperPerennial (paperback): $7.00
1998: HarperPerennial (paperback): $10.00
2005: HarperCollins (hardcover): $24.95
2006: HarperPerennial (paperback): $14.95
2008: HarperPerennial (paperback): $16.95
2020: HarperPerennial (paperback): $17.99

Related:
• A Notebook on Richard Wright & Book History

Belonging: The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl

By Lakenzie Walls

I remember watching The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl YouTube series for the first time and feeling relieved that somehow I was finally being seen. Besides, being an introvert as a black girl when the world views black as cool isn’t easy.

Aside from the series, Issa Rae’s memoir provides a helpful guide for navigating through spaces as an awkward black girl. How did feeling out of place give Rae a unique vantage point? In an excerpt from Rae’s memoir The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, she reveals the reasons behind creating Awkward Black Girl (ABG):

At the time I came up with the concept of ABG, I was just a clumsy, frustrated, socially inept, recently graduated adult, looking for confirmation that I wasn’t alone. No, I didn't think I was a monster or vampire, Junot; it wasn’t that deep. But at some level, as each new model for social media strives to connect us in new, paradoxically estranged ways, there exists a consistent core, the human desire to feel included.

Figuring out where we fit in can ensure those awkward moments arise, and if we’re anything like Rae, we can channel those moments and turn them into sketch comedy. However, in the book, Rae describes the challenges of growing up as a Senegalese-American in the black community. Along with cultural differences came clashes with classmates about her dancing ability and musical interest.

My favorite part in the book is a chapter where Rae reflects on her hilarious self-taught dance moves to get her through a high school party. I remember reading that chapter as I painfully reflected on my awkward dance attempts at a high school dance. From childhood to adulthood, Rae has used feelings of awkwardness or being out of place to give her an important vantage point and serve as inspiration for her art.

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

Black Boy @ 75 presentation description

Next Thursday, I'll give a presentation on aspects of my research ad writing on Richard Wright and publishing history. Maryemma Graham, founder of the Project on the History of Black Writing (HBW), invited me to discuss Black Boy in the context of the 75th anniversary of  the book's release.

Here's my write-up for the talk:

At multiple points from 1945 to 2020, publishers sought to represent Richard Wright’s autobiography Black Boy to readers in ways that situated the book in different historical and aesthetic contexts. The varied editions of Black Boy display a body of bibliographic codes and visual cues that present us with important information concerning the production and reception of Wright’s work since its initial publication. Studying the Black Boy covers can serve as a gateway into the interconnected realms of African American literature and book history. The varied framing of this autobiography over the last 75 years represents intriguing approaches that publishers used to encourage people to purchase and read Wright’s account of his life.

Related:
• A Notebook on Richard Wright & Book History

A Notebook on Richard Wright & Book History

I entered the field of Book History studying the publishing histories of Richard Wright's Black Boy long before I realized that Book History was a field.

Related: Representing Richard Wright's Black Boy

Back in 1999, I began collecting and then examining versions of Wright's autobiography. Over the years, I gathered a large collection of his books.

Entries
2020
• April 23: From Richard Wright to Frederick Douglass
• April 23: From Richard Wright to Octavia Butler
• April 23: Prices for Richard Wright's Black Boy
• April 15: Black Boy @ 75 presentation description

2019
• February 4: Richard Wright's Autobiography and Black Book History

2013
• September 2: Richard Wright Autobiography covers 

2012 
• September 4: Negro Digest features Richard Wright on the cover (Jan. 1968) 
• April 28: Richard Wright & Lovejoy Library  

2009
• April 13: Richard Wright Stamp 

Related:
• A notebook on Richard Wright

A post from William J. Harris on birds sparked Amiri Baraka project

On March 23, scholar and poet William J. Harris posted a link to a site on bird sounds. You can go to the site and click on one of fifty different bird species to hear how they sound. I was fascinated by the site.

I then began thinking about what a site like that would mean if I applied it to poetry, specifically Amiri Baraka. For more than a decade now, I have thought about Baraka's wordless phrasings. Back in 2016, I published an entry here entitled "the wonderful wordless phrasings of Amiri Baraka." Maybe, I thought to myself then, one day I could do more. But that was thrown on the big pile of "things to do."

Harris's post, though, sparked my thinking again. But I needed help. Since we've been off because of the coronavirus, I had some time. I reached out to Ben Ostermeier, our IRIS Center technician, and showed him the bird site. I asked if he could figure out how it worked. He replied soon after saying yes. I just needed to provide the materials.

I had been collecting Baraka sounds for several years, so the only task was to narrow things down. I decided on twelve excerpts, and then sent the materials to Ben with some outlines for the look. And here we are: The Wonderful Wordless Phrasings of Amiri Baraka.

Related:
• A Notebook on the Wonderful Wordless Phrasings of Amiri Baraka

Belonging: Stories of New Orleans East by Sarah Broom

By Lakenzie Walls

In an excerpt from The Yellow House, Sarah Broom considers a time she began working in the French Quarter on summer break from college.

My Summer at CC’s was the first time in my life that I spent consecutive days in the French Quarter. The experience took on the boundlessness of all discoveries. On that one summer, I based entire narratives about my growing-up years in New Orleans that played to the non-natives’ imagination.

Broom revisits past details of her life while trying to see beyond famous tourist sites in New Orleans. She includes stories from native New Orleanians, which gives her a critical vantage point.

The summer job at the coffee shop in the French Quarter offers Broom a unique perspective. While moving through the Quarter, she explores the economic disparity that people in her neighborhood face because of their zip code. These disparities are not highlighted in her stories and letters she writes to her friends, but it later contributes to her reasons for writing her memoir.

The most compelling parts of the story involve exchanges with strangers asking Broom where she’s from. College friends with no idea of New Orleans East have made assumptions about how exciting life must be there because of the jazz, culinary experience, historical sites, and above all, the nightlife in the French Quarter. All this might be true for some residents; however, Broom describes this as:

Defining myself almost exclusively by a mythology, allowing the city to do what it does best and for so many: act as a cipher, transfiguring into whatever I needed it to be. I did not yet understand the psychic cost of defining oneself by the place where you are from.

Interestingly, Broom gets the opportunity to write a shortened version of The Yellow House for the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in The New Yorker. In the article, she explores details of her family recovery after the storm and how they began to pick up the pieces of their lives. The Yellow House is profoundly personal and offers Broom a unique vantage point that helps her map her past, present, and future.

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

A Notebook on the Wonderful Wordless Phrasings of Amiri Baraka

I've been studying Amiri Baraka's poetry and his sounds for many years now. With tremendous heavy lifting by Ben Ostermeier, IRIS Center technician, we were able to translate some of my interests into an interactive site displaying Baraka's wonderful wordless phrasings.

The site allows you to hear excerpts of Baraka humming and projecting an array of sounds.

More information:
• "Oooowow!": the wonderful wordless phrasings of Amiri Baraka
• A post from William J. Harris on birds sparked Amiri Baraka project

Related:
• Amiri Baraka

Bad Men as creative touchstones for outstanding compositions

Since 2000 black men — many of whom were perceived as bad, insubordinate, or troubling — motivated astonishing output from African American writers. Paul Beatty, Tyehimba Jess, Adrian Matejka, Kevin Young, and the late Amiri Baraka, to name some, concentrated on legendary and disreputable cultural figures as they composed literary works.

Those writers were of course extending longstanding practices among African American storytellers and artists who have been moved to share captivating tales of bad men for hundreds of years now. The sheer number and high quality of works on bad men produced during the twenty-first century signal how elemental those figures are to creativity.

My book advances literary studies by exploring how African American writers have drawn on black boys and “bad” men as creative touchstones for producing outstanding compositions. The project illuminates the works of writers, especially black male writers, most of whom have concentrated on these separate yet related subjects for extended periods. Their portrayals of different kinds of bad black men have proved crucial to the production of remarkable writings. Relatedly, depictions of black boys have given other writers pathways to create marvelous works.

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You can order Bad Men from the University of Virginia Press. Receive a 30% discount by using the promo code: 10BAD30.

Related:
• A notebook on Bad Men: Creative Touchstones of Black Writers

Those Bad Men postcards

The folks at the University of Virginia Press are fast. I knew for some time that I wanted to get postcards designed to assist in promoting my book, Bad Men: Creative Touchstones of Black Writers. I was thinking through ideas on how I would pull it off.

So I mentioned it to Jason Coleman and Emma Donovan, who work in marketing at the press. We traded emails over a few hours, and by the next day, they had produced the final version based on the book cover.

Now before the "shelter in place" recommendations with coronavirus, the plan was for me to circulate the postcards to a hundred or so people. That plan has obviously been postponed. I was still able to take some photos at home of the book and the postcards, so you'll have to take my word for it when I say it turned out fresh. Well, my word and the images.

I never thought the world would be where it is today. Thus, I certainly didn't imagine that my book would be releasing during a pandemic. We're at a moment now where a book about black writing is nowhere near the top of anyone's priorities.

Still, looking at these bad men postcards when I moving around the house serve a good purpose. I see the image and think back to a different moment in the seemingly long ago past that wasn't that long ago. The postcards are a snapshot reminder of a distinct time a while back when I was thinking optimiscally about the future.


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You can order Bad Men from the University of Virginia Press. Receive a 30% discount by using the promo code: 10BAD30.

Related:
• A notebook on Bad Men: Creative Touchstones of Black Writers

Preface -- Bad Men: Creative Touchstones of Black Writers

Bad Men: Creative Touchstones of Black Writers

In 2004 I began working with a program at my university to support the academic and intellectual efforts of first-year, collegiate black men. Given my training in African American literary studies, one of my main contributions to the program involved introducing the students to compositions by black writers. The class was an unconventional English course, so I was not restrained by a typical literature curriculum, nor was I obligated to focus only on novelists, poets, and short-story writers—mainstays of American and African American literature courses. By far the most popular composition that I introduced to the students during the first couple of years was an article entitled “Urban Legend” (2003), by Ralph Wiley, a sports journalist. The short article focused on the phenomenal Allen Iverson.

“Quick? Impossibly quick. Not just quick, but fast, freak-of-nature fast,” wrote Wiley. “Allen is ‘Rocky’ for the people ‘Rocky’ forgot.”

By most accounts, Iverson was a bad man. He was known for his tough exterior and apparent thug lifeways. But for Wiley and the young men in my course, Iverson was also a muse. Iverson sparked ideas, provoked debates, and encouraged heroic thoughts.

The students in the course, several of whom had been designated “bad” at some point or another, were often compelled to testify that Iverson and men like Iverson were inspirational. Wiley could find the good in Iverson, and so could the young men in my class. I developed a writing assignment entitled “Local Urban Legend,” where the first-year students were invited to write a short profile piece, in the spirit of Wiley, about the sometimes-hidden talents of people from their home environments. The guys wrote about playground basketball legends, ex-cons from their neighborhoods, and failing students who were far more intelligent than their grade point averages reflected. The consensus among the students was that they could have written much more than what they submitted. That acknowledgment was a pleasant surprise since under most circumstances quite a few of them disliked academic writing assignments.

That early assignment was the genesis for my thinking about the possibility of bad men as muses. Sure, like most people, I had heard the idea that “everybody loves bad boys.” Still, I was discovering additional prospects for what that might mean for writers. Discussions of bad men, I came to realize, were closely related to considerations of a variety of creative approaches and ideas.

This book illuminates some of the ways that black boys viewed as vulnerable or harmed and black men thought of as bad have served as sources of creative inspiration for an array of contemporary black writers in poems, novels, news articles, blog entries, and comic strips.

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You can order Bad Men from the University of Virginia Press. Receive a 30% discount by using the promo code: 10BAD30.

Related:
• A notebook on Bad Men: Creative Touchstones of Black Writers

Bad Men: Creative Touchstones of Black Writers

I've been researching and writing this book Bad Men: Creative Touchstones of Black Writers for the last few years. So I'm glad that it's finally out. I'm hoping the book contributes in some way to at least two fields of knowledge -- African American literary studies and creativity studies.

Though I started writing in a formal way a few years ago, I've been running my mind through and around these interrelated topics for an extended period of time. On the one hand, I was reading and re-reading a core group of black men writers who made defiant and troubling men central to their compositions. At the same time, I was reading a variety of works about vulnerable black boys, perhaps most notably with Trayvon Martin amd Mike Brown.

With trial, error, and many revisions along the way, I formulated a full project that allowed me to explore those topics. I wrote chapters about:

• bad men in poetry volumes by Tyehimba Jess, Adrian Matejka, and Kevin Young.
• bad men in poetry and rap lyrics.
• sellouts as bad men as expressed by Paul Beatty and Amiri Baraka.
• how Aaron McGruder utilized two black boys as the basis for compelling creative output.
• how black boys Martin and Brown stimulated creativity from Ta-Nehisi Coates and Trymaine Lee.

I hope you'll check the book out when and if you get a chance.

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You can order Bad Men from the University of Virginia Press. Receive a 30% discount by using the promo code: 10BAD30.

Related:
• A notebook on Bad Men: Creative Touchstones of Black Writers

Blogging about poetry in March 2020

[Related content: Blogging about Poetry]

• March 24: Writing about a poetic trilogy of bad men
• March 14: Coverage of Jay Electronica's A Written Testimony, featuring Jay-Z
• March 1: Blogging about poetry in February