Farah Jasmine Griffin, African American literary scholars, and Autobiographical writing

With the publication of her newest book, Farah Jasmine Griffin joins Deborah McDowell, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Imani Perry, and various scholars of African American literature who've produced memoirs and autobiographical writings. 

Here's a roundup of some works:

1994: Colored People: A Memoir by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  

1996: Leaving Pipe Shopw: Memories of Kin by Deobroah McDowell

1996: Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood by bell hooks

2003: Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South by Trudier Harris

2007: I Don't Hate the South: Reflections on Faulkner, Family, and the South by Houston A. Baker, Jr.

2012: My Father's Name: A Black Virginia Family after the Civil War by Lawrence P. Jackson

2012: Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City by Carla L. Peterson 

2019: Breathe: A Letter to My Sons by Imani Perry 

2021: Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature by Farah Jasmine Griffin

I'm sure there are even more works that I'm overlooking at the moment. So think of the above as a work-in-progress. 

Poets, journalists, entertainers, and politicians have collectively produced a large body of memoirs and autobiographies. Reading Griffin's book had me thankful, though, for the memoirs and autobiographical works produced by literary scholars. 

Griffin spends considerable time discussing the works of a wide range of black writers, along with the aspects of her upbringing. I appreciated her mixing genres -- literary criticism and memoir -- as she presented so many ideas about black people and culture. 

  

I wish we had multiple narratives from scholars of African American literature about their experiences in the classroom and producing scholarship. Folks like Griffin, McDowell, Gates, Harris, and others have been teaching and writing about black literary art and history for decades, and I imagine they've seen and learned so much that would be useful for us to consider.  And what about those literature professors who've spent their careers teaching at HBCUs? 

There's a certain self-consciousness about black artistic and cultural traditions in Griffin's writing that  will lead me to recommend her book to students interested in memoir, autobiography, and black culture in general. Read Until You Understand is an individual and collective story. It's about this one person, and it's also about her family, her Philadelphia environment, and all these marvelous productions by black people across time and space. In short, Griffin stretches our sense of what's possibile with autobiographical writing.     

Related: 

• A Notebook on Farah Jasmine Griffin's Read Until You Understand  

Farah Jasmine Griffin's tribute to, elaboration on a well-read black man

Over the years, thanks in large part to the many black students I've worked with and the conversations we've had, I've gotten to hear quite a bit about the roles of black men passing along books and educational lessons to younger folks. In the courses I teach comprised of first-year collegiate black men, the discussions of what they've learned from their fathers and uncles are especially prevalent. The young guys will talk about how older black men introduced them to various books or shared unwritten histories with them. 

These stories of how information and ideas were passed along by black men give me unique views of the production of knowledge in our communities. Farah Jasmine Griffin extends my interest in the subject with her book Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature. Griffin's father died when she was nine years old, but he had already instilled a sense of wonder concerning books, reading, and writing with his daughter. 

Most notably, not long before he died, Emerson Maxwell Griffin thought he was going to be sent to prison, so he gave his child books and scribbed notes in the front and margins. In one book, he informed her: "Jazzie, read this book / You may not understand it / At first. But read it and understand" (36). In another book, he wrote a note: "Baby read it until you understand" (36). 

A short time later, he died, and, as Griffin points out, "the notes in the books became even more precious. His hand had touched them, his distinct, careful handwriting contained something of him. He had cared enough to write notes to me" (37).  

Griffin recalls lessons here and there that she picked up from her dad at a young age. Losing him so soon but having the books in the house that he owned meant that she was determined to read those works. (She also learned quite a bit from her mother and others, which I'll take up in a future post). 

The young Griffin learned that her father held Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X in high esteeem, so she did as well. His interest in those figures led her to read about them and learn more about their related and different worldviews. 

Griffin's father taught her "by word and example" that "reading and study were central to our strugle as a people and to my overall development as a human being" (36). Reading the books her father read led her to more and more books and authors, and following those various lines of study led her to seek out and work with various accomplished teachers and mentors.

In high school, she worked in the office of Federal District Court Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, where she catalogued many of the books in his chambers. In undergrad, she worked closely with  the literary scholar Wernor Sollors and the historian Nathan Huggins. In graduate school, she studied with the philosopher Cornel West.

Maybe some of you have asked as I have: what led to the emergence of a brilliant African American literary and Black Studies scholar like Farah Jasmine Griffin? This book provides an answer: a loving, politically-minded and intellectually curious black father. 

Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature is an important touchstone for those of us interested in the transmission of knowledge among African Americans. Similar to those stories about fathers and uncles shared by my students, Griffin's book is, among other things, a tribute to and elaboration on a well-read black man.      

Related 

• A Notebook on Farah Jasmine Griffin's Read Until You Understand

Farah Jasmine Griffin and the art of mixing genres

There's much to admire about Farah Jasmine Griffin's new book Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature (2021). And I'll try to offer a few perspectives in the coming weeks. For now, I wanted to briefly mention genre(s), or more accurately the art of mixing genres. 

A combination of literary criticism and memoir forms the basis of Griffin's book and created an enjoyable, powerful reading experience. 

Griffin has been an important scholar of African American literary studies for quite some time now. She first became known to me and many others based on her book "Who Set You Flowin'?": The African-American Migration Narrative (1995). Migration is so crucial to black thought and artistic production, so Griffin's text was invaluable for my thinking just as I was entering the field of African American literary studies.  

Later, she published If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (2001) and Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II (2013), among other works. She's published scholarship on poetry, novels, jazz, and subjects such as Toni Cade Bambara, Amiri Baraka, Aaron Douglas, Toni Morrison, and Black Studies. So she was producing biographical work, cultural studies, and literary analyses since the beginning of her career. 

Now though, with the new book, we learn more about her personal background as a reader and letter writer--subject positions that preceded the scholar we recognize as Farah Jasmine Griffin. She reflects on early lessons from her parents and environment in Phiadelphia, and she connects those lessons to a varity of texts she's read over the decades.    

Read Until You Understand is a mix of memoir and criticism, and at same time, the book documents Griffin's explorations of muliple works--poems, history books, paintings, songs, handwritten notes from family members, and clothing (her mother is a skilled seamstress). 

There's this long tradition of reading and readers in black autobiography, most famously represented in the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright, and Malcolm X. I'm always mindful of their works, but in comparison to them, Griffin offers a more detailed account of what it meant to be a black reader from a young age. Through it all, she has always been mixing genres, demonstrating the value of reading (and listening and viewing) widely. 

Related:

• A Notebook on Farah Jasmine Griffin's Read Until You Understand 

A roundup of African American bibliographies on Cultural Front

I've been talking with folks recently about African American bibliographies, and realized I had not yet posted a roundup of all the bibliographies ('coverage of' entries, checklists, standard bibliographies, and roundups) that I have produced here on the site over the years. So here goes 

2020

• December 31: Coverage of the Mellon Foundation, Social Justice, and Elizabeth Alexander

• December 4: Coverage of Nafissa Thompson-Spires's Heads of the Colored People 

• June 1: Reading lists for Black Boys and Collegiate Black Men
• May 21: A book list for black boys

• February 23: A checklist of Black Arts-related scholarship, 1999 - 2018

• January 18: A checklist of poetry volumes on black historical figures

2019

• December 24: Poetry by black writers, 2000 - 2019
• December 21: Novels by black writers, 2000 - 2019

• December 17: Books about Hip Hop, 2000 - 2019

• December 16: Short story collections by black writers, 2000 - 2019

• November 19: A Roundup of African American single-author studies
• November 19: A Bibliography of Black Writer Biographies
• November 16: 50 Black Autobiographies and Memoirs, 1845 - 2019
• August 30: 110 novels by black men, 2000 - 2019
• August 25: 160+ novels by black women, 2000 - 2019

• August 6: Coverage of Toni Morrison's passing

• June 29: 160 volumes of poetry by black women, 2000 - 2019

• June 27: Coverage of The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

• June 9: From Jubilee to The Water Dancer: 25 novels about slavery

• January 26: Coverage of (new) Native Son film

2018
• December 17: A checklist of comics by black writers and artists in 2018

• August 20: Roundup of coverage on Eve L. Ewing and Marvel's Riri Williams/Ironheart

• August 19: 50 scholarly books on black poetry, 1997-2018

• August 3: 53 black women poets, 106 poems: Audio recordings

• July 4: Coverage of Captain America, Ta-Nehisi Coates

• March 3: Early Coverage of Ta-Nehisi Coates as new Captain America writer
• March 30: Coverage of study on black boys and struggles with mobility

• February 7: Coverage of American Marriage by Tayari Jones

2017
• December 20: Coverage of Cornel West and Ta-Nehisi Coates
• October 1: Coverage of Ta-Nehisi Coates's We Were Eight Years in Power
• September 23: Coverage of Ta-Nehisi Coates's "The First White President"

• February 23: Roundup of coverage concerning potential arts and humanities budget cuts 

• January 24: A short checklist of African American poets on artworks & artists 

2016
• May 29: Black men writers and creativity, 1995 - 2016

• April 5: Coverage of Ta-Nehisi Coates & Brian Stelfreeze’s Black Panther

• February 23: 52 of the most anthologized African American poems

• January 18: Coverage of Paul Beatty's The Sellout

Decision-making and African American literary studies

This summer, in my graduate course on African American literature, I regularly posed questions to students about what they will teach and why. I wanted to make decision-making a primary focus of the course, since it is so central to the work I do as a college professor.

I'm constantly making decisions about this poem or that poem, this story or that story, and these authors rather than these. There's always the issue of time constraints, of too many authors and reading materials and too little time. 

For some reason though, the importance or pervasiveness of decision-making is under-discussed in the field. People speak frequently, with some annoyance, when an author that they prefer is left out of an anthology or is overlooked in the scholarly discourse. You also hear teachers and professors agnoize over preparing their syllabi. 

But you hear less specific talk about the decision-making processes involved in designing African American literature courses over time. By getting my students to think about decision-making, I was introducing them to a a central process for teachers. 

Related: 

• Twenty-two years covering Amiri Baraka's "Dope"

• Time Constraints & African American Poetry

Twenty-two years covering Amiri Baraka's "Dope"

This summer, among several different poems, I covered Amiri Baraka's "Dope" and "Jungle Jim Flunks His Screen Test" with my graduate students. As an assignment, they had to determine which one of those poems they'd choose if time constraints allowed them to focus on just one.

I was initially surprised that most of them chose "Dope." But then, I shouldn't have been. I've chosen that poem again and again now for twenty-two years.

I first encountered Baraka's poem during a graduate school visit to Pennsylvania State University in the spring of 1999. A graduate student who was already in the program asked me if I had heard Baraka reading it before, and when I said, "no," he was like you gotta check it out. He played it on his computer. 

I was blown away. I was almost done with my undergraduate career at Tougaloo College, and I had never heard anything like what Baraka was doing in the poem. The pace. The politics. The jokes. The wordless phrasings. The many, many references, that outstanding cultural catalog. 

Later that day, I met with Professor William J. Harris. I was somehow not fully aware that he was a leading Baraka scholar, because if I had known, I would've asked him more questions. Instead, I went on and on telling him how moved I was by Baraka's "Dope." At one point, Professor Harris reached onto his bookshelf, got a copy of Call and Response, and said, "Here. The CD with 'Dope' on it comes with it." 

Obviously, I decided to attend Penn State for graduate school. A considerable amount of time in graduate school involved me talking Baraka with Professor Harris.  

Fast forward to spring 2003, I visited Southern Illinois University Edwardsville for a campus visit. I gave a research presentation, where I discussed Coltrane poems, noting work by Baraka, Jayne Cortez, Haki Madhubuti, and others. I also had to give a "teaching presentation" for one of Eugene B. Redmond's literatures classes, and I decided to introduce them to Baraka's "Dope." 

Like me, the students were blown away. That the students rated me so highly and vocally expressed their desire for me to teach at SIUE was no doubt shaped by their interest in Baraka's poem. 

I've been teaching at SIUE for eighteen years now, and during that time, I've made Baraka's "Dope" a staple of all my literature courses, presenting the poem to students every year.   

Related:

• A notebook on Amiri Baraka

Blogging about poetry in July 2021

 [Related content: Blogging about Poetry]

• July 31: Time Constraints & African American Poetry

• July 14: Blogging about Douglass and poetry

• July 14: A checklist of Douglass poems

• July 1: Blogging about poetry in June 2021

From Wesley Morris to Wesley Morris; or notes on Black Journalists & Culture Writers, 2012 - 2021

Wesley Morris, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ta-Nehisi Coates

I've been thinking and sometimes saying that we've been witnessing really important developments among black journalists. But it's not something talked about much or even enough in African American literary studies in large part because the field has a history of privileging novels and then to a degree poetry and short stories. 

Still, when it comes to black writers, shouldn't black journalists matter too? Of course, they do, and I'd say that over the last decade and a half, we've gotten a chance to check out really important writers.

In a recent interview with Ezra Klein, I noticed Ta-Nehisi Coates, perhaps the most well-known black writer of our day, noting the subject of black journalists. He was pointing out that for the last decade "a number of African American voices who have been wielding power in the arena of journalism."

He cited Nikole Hannah-Jones's 1619 Project and noted that "Wesley Lowery" was now up to his second Pulitzer. Coates in fact meant Wesley Morris, who won a Pulitzer in 2012 and another one in 2021. (Of course, Lowery has done well too, first at the Washington Post, where he was part of a team that won a Pulitzer, and he is now a correspondent for 60 Minutes and CBS News).

Coates notes that this new shift in journalism was "a reflection of Obama’s election." Maybe. But we can trace important work by Coates and other black journalists since before Obama. I have long thought that publications begin to seek out more black voices with the rise of Condoleezza Rice. I recall all the attention that Robin Givhan's fashion criticism received when she wrote about Rice's Commanding Clothes in 2005. Givhan won a Pulitzer for Criticism in 2006. 

In 2010, journalist Isabel Wilkerson won the National Book Critics Circle Award The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration.