Haley Scholars (Group 2) Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "Friday Black"

[Haley Reading Groups Spring 2022] 

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "Friday Black" is an unlikely zombie tale. The story is about a salesperson's experiences and observations at a mall when people trample over each other as they rabidly struggle in trance-like states of consciousness to purchase goods on Black Friday.

The story presents brutal violence in vivid detail of customers rushing in and fighting for products. "Friday Black" offers a kind of dark humor. On the one hand, it's almost amusing that people would be this intense about Black Friday sales. On the other hand, it's a sad, disturbing commentary that things might get this bad.

What stood out to you more -- the disturbing details of the actual story OR the idea that something along these lines could happen in real life? Briefly (one or two sentences) explain why you made the choice that you did.

Haley Scholars (Group 1) Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "Friday Black"

[Haley Reading Groups Spring 2022] 

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "Friday Black" is an unlikely zombie tale. The story is about a salesperson's experiences and observations at a mall when people trample over each other as they rabidly struggle in trance-like states of consciousness to purchase goods on Black Friday.

The story presents brutal violence in vivid detail of customers rushing in and fighting for products. "Friday Black" offers a kind of dark humor. On the one hand, it's almost amusing that people would be this intense about Black Friday sales. On the other hand, it's a sad, disturbing commentary that things might get this bad.

What stood out to you more -- the disturbing details of the actual story OR the idea that something along these lines could happen in real life? Briefly (one or two sentences) explain why you made the choice that you did.

Recordings of Poems, freestyles by Black Women Poets

 Here's a roundup of recordings of poems and freestyles by black women that we've repeateldy covered in one of my African American literature courses over the last several years.

• Maya Angelou - "Phenomenal Woman" and "Still I Rise"

• Gwendolyn Brooks - "Song in the Front Yard" and "We Real Cool"

• Mahogany L. Browne - "Black Girl Magic" 

• Lucille Clifton - "Homage to My Hips" and "won't you celebrate with me"

• Wanda Coleman  - "Wanda, Why Aren't You Dead?" 

• Jayne Cortez - "I Am New York City"

• Dreezy - "Chiraq"

• Kelly Norman Ellis - "Raised by Women"

• Nikki Giovanni - "Ego-Tripping" and "Nikki Rosa"

• Lauryn Hill - "Freedom Time"

• June Jordan - "Poem about My Rights"

• Meg Thee Stallion - freestyle 

• Tracie Morris - "Project Princess" 

• Jae Nichelle - "Friends With Benefits"

• Porsha (Porsha O.) Olayiwola - "Angry Black Woman"

• Sonia Sanchez - "summer words of a sistuh addict," "a/needed/poem for my salvation"

• Patricia Smith - "Skinhead"

• Margaret Walker - "For My People," "Molly Means," "Kissie Lee"

A Research Project on Recordings of Black Women Poets

Over the last couple of years, Marit MacArthur, Lee M. Miller, Xiaoliu Wu, Qin Ding, and I worked on a project analyzing pitch, timing and intensity (volume) patterns in recordings of black women poets. 

The following links provide supplemental metadata about the poets and the recordings. 

• 101 black women poets, 203 poems

• Birth years and aesthetic categories of Black women poets (Spoken Word and not)

• Selection of Recordings, Background Metadata and Statistical Methods

Update:

On August 27, 2022, the Los Angeles Review of Books published our article, "101 Black Women Poets in Mainly White and Mainly Black Rooms." 

Birth years and aesthetic categories of Black women poets (Spoken Word and not)

What follows are the birth years of writers from a research project on recordings of Black women poets.

During the process of our research, we designated 29 poets as Spoken Word (SW) and eight poets as proto-spoken word (PSW). 

 
• Margaret Walker (1915) 

• Gwendolyn Brooks (1917) 

• Mari Evans (1919) 

• Naomi Long Madgett (1923) 

• Dolores Kendrick (1927) 

• Maya Angelou (1928) -- PSW

• Jayne Cortez (1934) -- PSW

• Audre Lorde (1934) 

• Sonia Sanchez (1934) -- PSW

• Colleen J. McElroy (1935) 

• Lucille Clifton (1936) -- PSW

• Wanda Coleman (1936) -- PSW

• June Jordan (1936) -- PSW

• Toi Derricotte (1941) 

• Nikki Giovanni (1943) 

• Pat Parker (1944) -- PSW

• Alice Walker (1944) 

• Carolyn Beard Whitlow (1945) 

• Marilyn Nelson (1946) 

• Cheryl Clarke (1947) 

• M. NourbeSe Philip (1947) 

• Angela Jackson (1951) 

• Patricia Spears Jones (1951) 

101 black women poets, 203 poems

The following 101 poets and 203 poems were used for a research on Black women poets produced by Marit MacArthur, Lee M. Miller, Xiaoliu Wu, Qin Ding, and me.

• Samantha Adams - "Eartha Lifts her Slip" and "Three Mothers of Gynecology Pry open J Marion Sims"

• Opal Palmer Adisa - "Public Restrooms Prelude" and "This Poem Is An Invitation"

• Elizabeth Alexander - "Praise Song for the Day" and "One Week Later in the Strange"
• Maya Angelou - "Phenomenal Woman" and "Still I Rise"
• Aziza Barnes - "Aunt Jemima" and "My Dad Asks, 'How Come Black Folk Can't Just Write About Flowers?"

• Remica L. Bingham-Risher - "The Body Speaks" and "House of the Ten Plagues"

• Tara Betts - "Switch" and  "Erasure"
• Gwendolyn Brooks - "Song in the Front Yard" and "We Real Cool"
• Mahogany L. Browne - "Black Girl Magic" and "Redbone Shames the Devil"
• Staceyann Chin - "Feminist or a Womanist" and "If Only Out Of Vanity"

Pre-publication Coverage of Colson Whitehead's Crook Manifesto

On March 8 on Twitter, Colson Whitehead announced that his newest novel, Crook Manifesto will appear in Summer 2023. Here's a roundup of pre-publication coverage. 

2023

• July 3: Most Anticipated: The Great 2023B Book Preview - The Millions

• April 12: Crook Manifesto - Kirkus Reviews

• February 3: Colson Whitehead Revisits 1970s New York City2022 - Aaron Gwyn - Publishers Weekly

2022

• October 26: Our Book Cover Reveal of Colson Whitehead’s Crook Manifesto - Hamilton Cain - Oprah Daily

• October 26: Fleet acquires new novel from Colson Whitehead - Little, Brown 

• March 8: Get ready: Colson Whitehead’s new novel is coming next summer - Emily Firetog - LitHub 

•  March 8: Colson Whitehead Tweets Title of His Next Novel - Michael Schaub - Kirkus Reviews

• March 8: Summer 2023 - Twitter

Haley Scholars (Group 3) Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "Zimmer Land"

[Haley Reading Groups Spring 2022]

By now, we're seeing that Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a really inventive, far out thinker who takes tidbits from current events and our contemporary society and stretches those ideas to some really dreadful conclusions in a near or distant future. 

Along those lines, Adjei-Brenyah's "Zimmer Land" showcases an amusement park where patrons role play in environments where they ultimately shoot (with fake bullets) people who they view as threats. The protagonist of the story is a black man. He is the most popular target of park visitors who are interested in acting out situations where they kill an alleged threatening or confrontational black man. 

 Adjei-Brenyah's work isn't classified as horror fiction, but the implications of some of the stories are scary. 

Here are two questions: 

1.) After reading the story, what's one good question that you would be inclined to ask Adjei-Brenyah about his approach to storytelling in "Zimmer Land" or about how his mind as a creative artist works in general? (Respond with just one sentence)

2.) Why are you interested in that question, or what good or useful response do you think your question would prompt? (Respond with just one sentence)

Haley Scholars (Group 4) Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "Zimmer Land"

[Haley Reading Groups Spring 2022]

By now, we're seeing that Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a really inventive, far out thinker who takes tidbits from current events and our contemporary society and stretches those ideas to some really dreadful conclusions in a near or distant future. 

Along those lines, Adjei-Brenyah's "Zimmer Land" showcases an amusement park where patrons role play in environments where they ultimately shoot (with fake bullets) people who they view as threats. The protagonist of the story is a black man. He is the most popular target of park visitors who are interested in acting out situations where they kill an alleged threatening or confrontational black man. 

 Adjei-Brenyah's work isn't classified as horror fiction, but the implications of some of the stories are scary. 

Here are two questions: 

1.) After reading the story, what's one good question that you would be inclined to ask Adjei-Brenyah about his approach to storytelling in "Zimmer Land" or about how his mind as a creative artist works in general? (Respond with just one sentence)

2.) Why are you interested in that question, or what good or useful response do you think your question would prompt? (Respond with just one sentence)

Haley Scholars (Group 5) Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "Zimmer Land"

[Haley Reading Groups Spring 2022]

By now, we're seeing that Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a really inventive, far out thinker who takes tidbits from current events and our contemporary society and stretches those ideas to some really dreadful conclusions in a near or distant future. 

Along those lines, Adjei-Brenyah's "Zimmer Land" showcases an amusement park where patrons role play in environments where they ultimately shoot (with fake bullets) people who they view as threats. The protagonist of the story is a black man. He is the most popular target of park visitors who are interested in acting out situations where they kill an alleged threatening or confrontational black man. 

 Adjei-Brenyah's work isn't classified as horror fiction, but the implications of some of the stories are scary. 

Here are two questions: 

1.) After reading the story, what's one good question that you would be inclined to ask Adjei-Brenyah about his approach to storytelling in "Zimmer Land" or about how his mind as a creative artist works in general? (Respond with just one sentence)

2.) Why are you interested in that question, or what good or useful response do you think your question would prompt? (Respond with just one sentence)

Haley Scholars (Group 1) Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "Zimmer Land"

[Haley Reading Groups Spring 2022]

By now, we're seeing that Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a really inventive, far out thinker who takes tidbits from current events and our contemporary society and stretches those ideas to some really dreadful conclusions in a near or distant future. 

Along those lines, Adjei-Brenyah's "Zimmer Land" showcases an amusement park where patrons role play in environments where they ultimately shoot (with fake bullets) people who they view as threats. The protagonist of the story is a black man. He is the most popular target of park visitors who are interested in acting out situations where they kill an alleged threatening or confrontational black man. 

 Adjei-Brenyah's work isn't classified as horror fiction, but the implications of some of the stories are scary. 

Here are two questions: 

1.) After reading the story, what's one good question that you would be inclined to ask Adjei-Brenyah about his approach to storytelling in "Zimmer Land" or about how his mind as a creative artist works in general? (Respond with just one sentence)

2.) Why are you interested in that question, or what good or useful response do you think your question would prompt? (Respond with just one sentence)

Haley Scholars (Group 2) Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "Zimmer Land"

[Haley Reading Groups Spring 2022]

By now, we're seeing that Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a really inventive, far out thinker who takes tidbits from current events and our contemporary society and stretches those ideas to some really dreadful conclusions in a near or distant future. 

Along those lines, Adjei-Brenyah's "Zimmer Land" showcases an amusement park where patrons role play in environments where they ultimately shoot (with fake bullets) people who they view as threats. The protagonist of the story is a black man. He is the most popular target of park visitors who are interested in acting out situations where they kill an alleged threatening or confrontational black man. 

 Adjei-Brenyah's work isn't classified as horror fiction, but the implications of some of the stories are scary. 

Here are two questions: 

1.) After reading the story, what's one good question that you would be inclined to ask Adjei-Brenyah about his approach to storytelling in "Zimmer Land" or about how his mind as a creative artist works in general? (Respond with just one sentence)

2.) Why are you interested in that question, or what good or useful response do you think your question would prompt? (Respond with just one sentence)

Teaching Data Storytelling: Facebook Misinformation and Increased Voter Apathy

Link

Kenton Rambsy 

In a graduate history course, we used Michelle Alexander’s concept of “The New Jim Crow” as an umbrella term to consider a multitude of voter suppression tactics. Anika Khan’s visualization reveals the extent to which Facebook misinformation targeted various voting age populations with the intent to increase political apathy. Anika’s project responds to ideas in Christopher Wylie’s Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America.

“At first, no one could have imagined that Facebook or Twitter could be battlefield tools,” Wiley observes when describing his time working for Cambridge Analytica, a now defunct political consulting firm. “Russia did not have to disseminate propaganda” Wylie writes. “They could just get the Americans to do it themselves, by clicking, liking, and sharing.”

In addition to analyzing data related to voter disenfranchisement and suppression tactics, we also explored materials related to misinformation on Facebook. We worked with the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities’ (MITH’s) archive, “the Internet Research Ads Agency site”— a website contains over 3,000 Facebook advertisements that the Internet Research Agency, a Russia-linked “troll farm,” purchased in the run-up to the 2016 election campaign. We further catalogued this dataset into different categories to assess how racial profiling plays a role with misinformation.

Anika’s visualization points to voter ID laws, targeted misinformation campaigns, and an increase in voter disillusionment as having a direct bearing on the 2016 election. Her visualizations does not point to one specific problem. Instead, she points to a several factors that might have played a role in dissuading voters, especially black and brown people.

Data storytelling is a crucial practice in my courses. The process allows my students and I to be interactive readers, and actively translate concepts we discuss. More than just a digital humanities methodology, data storytelling presents us with different ways of authoring and presenting research.

Teaching Data Storytelling: Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, and the 2016 Election

Link

Kenton Rambsy

Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, inspired my student Kyle Aaron to create a visualization” that responds to a central tenet of the book. His Tableau Public visualization demonstrates how the 2016 presidential election might have had a different outcome if felons had the right to vote. In his results, he concludes that Minnesota would have possibly flipped in favor of Donald Trump, but Georgia, Florida, Minnesota, and Wisconsin would have gone to Hillary Clinton, giving her 288 electoral points and making her the president of the United States.

The FLOAT Method facilitated the ordering of Kyle’s thoughts, which in turn informed his research processes. He created this visualization using a dataset that compiled statistics such as the ineligibility percentage, winning margin percentage, eligible non-voter percentages, and likely voter affiliations in each state for 2016. He then created a projection model similar to election analysts to interpret mass incarceration’s impact on this presidential election. He used the data to calculate the probability of each state’s electoral vote if felons had the opportunity to cast ballots.

Kyle’s project underscores the importance of a well-thought-out research question. His original question “How impactful is disenfranchisement among felons in the 2016 US presidential election?” was too broad in scope when trying to analyze mass incarceration’s impact on presidential elections.

He revised his single question into three different inquiries:

1.) Which states had the possibility of changing their electoral vote in the election? 

2.) How would the electoral college count change nationally?

3.) Which political party has more people disenfranchised that could potentially flip the state? By doing offering these focused questions, he focused his analysis and decided upon a methodology that could yield specific answers.

Like Bailey Cannon’s project on voter disenfranchisement in Georgia, Kyle’s project focuses on a particular aspect of voting suppression tactics. Where Bailey looked at one state in particular, Kyle considered how disproportional conviction rates of Black and brown people possibly influence election outcomes. Taken together, their projects represent how deeply entrenched anti-black and institutional racist practices impede upon civil liberties. Moreover, their projects show how academic texts can stimulate visual interpretations.

In our graduate seminar, the FLOAT Method proved to be a useful (and iterative) step-by-step process that provided a blueprint for several types of data stories related to voter suppression tactics. My emphasis on data storytelling encourages my students to blur the lines between academic and social discourses by using quantitative and qualitative information to create visual narratives. Data visualizations offer one avenue by which we can translate academic ideas and circulate our findings in an online environment.

Teaching Data Storytelling: One Person, No Vote & Voter Suppression in Georgia

Kenton Rambsy

My experiences teaching data storytelling give me an opportunity to think about how I translate texts into visual aids or summaries. In a 2021 Graduate seminar called “The New Jim Crow,” I worked with students to explore how anti-Black racist ideas, over the course of American history, contributes to the enforcement of traditional, as well as new modes of discrimination and oppression. We used data analytic methodologies to analyze quantitative and qualitative datasets related to recent voter suppression strategies.

One student, Bailey Canon, produced a Tableau Public visualization that illustrated the extent to which voter suppression affects state and national elections in Georgia. Her project is inspired by Carol Anderson’s One Person, No Vote. In the visualization, she echoes Anderson’s sentiments regarding the development of voter ID laws, racial and partisan gerrymandering, and voter registration rolls purges by the Republican party disproportionately suppresses the votes of traditionally Democrat black and minority voters in the state of Georgia.

Bailey set out to answer the question: How has a combination of factors related to Voter ID laws, felony disenfranchisement, and gerrymandering impacted close state and national elections in Georgia over the past 16 years? By narrowing her focus to Georgia, she could identify specific data sources and pinpoint outlier districts.

In the book Storytelling with Data, Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic brings attention to two types of analyses that relate to the visualization process: exploratory and explanatory analysis. Exploratory analysis is what you do to understand the data and figure out what might be noteworthy or interesting to highlight. Explanatory analysis is when you settle on a specific finding you want to explain or a specific story you want to tell.

Knaflic likens the data storytelling process to opening 100 oysters where you might only find two pearls. She goes on to note people too often overwhelm audiences by trying to show 100 oysters, that is, too much. For her, it’s simple: “Concentrate on the pearls, the information your audience needs to know.” Bailey’s visualization similarly focuses on a key pearl: voter suppression strategies across the US.

My advice to people working on data storytelling projects or even teaching these methodologies to students is to always define the broad parameters of research question(s). In the end, it makes the research project manageable and yields insight to a specific, well-defined problem.

Teaching Data Storytelling: Beyonce & The Glass Ceiling on Black Art

Beyonce at the Grammys vs. Beyonce at BET

Kenton Rambsy 

I teach a senior seminar in the English Department that emphasizes data storytelling. Beyonce is a focal point of this course, which designed to equip students with ideas related to Black feminism while also introducing them to digital tools.

One student, Lucien Li, created a Tableau Public visualization based on the 53 of Grammy’s and BET awards that Beyonce had won since 2003 as a solo artist. The student’s chart highlights the fact that for the Grammy’s, Beyonce’s awards are mostly located in the “urban” category. At the BET Awards, however, Beyonce typically is nominated and wins in “general categories.”

Lucien’s digital essay builds on an Op-Ed published in the Los Angeles Times, “Beyoncé's Grammy snub and the glass ceiling on black art.” John Vilanova explains in the article that even though Beyonce is the most Grammy-nominated woman ever (with 62 nominations and 22 wins), her win rate of 35% is markedly low. Lucien wanted to explore this concept visually and highlight the challenges that Beyonce faces as a Black entertainer.

She used the FLOAT Method to organize her project, by first starting with a sound research question: What’s the difference between Beyonce’s Award nominations and wins at the Grammy’s versus the BET Awards?

The importance of beginning with a useful question cannot be overstated. The framing of this question facilitated Lucien’s ability to locate a data source and narrow her search and analysis to focus on two award institutions.

Beyonce is one of the most visible artists, yet the Grammy awards typecase her as a Black or urban artist. Beyonce was the gateway through which Lucien could begin to consider what institutional barriers impede upon Black women’s success.

Haley Scholars (Group 5) Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "The Era"

[Haley Reading Groups Spring 2022]

Since 2009, we've done this reading group and in the process covered dozens of readings. But perhaps we've never read a short story quite like Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "The Era." It's a story set in a future world after various wars and a re-organized society where genetic engineering has apparently gone to extremes, and brutal honesty has quite brutal. 

After reading "The Finkelstein 5" and now "The Era," I think we have to say something, really a lot of things at some point about the creative and intriguing ways that Adjei-Brenyah's mind works. 

Alright, I'm not even fully sure what questions to ask you because "The Era" disoriented me in unexpected and ultimately useful ways. So for now, let's do this: imagine several of us were in a room discussing this story. What should we focus on first concerning "The Era"? Why? 

Haley Scholars (Group 4) Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "The Era"

[Haley Reading Groups Spring 2022]

Since 2009, we've done this reading group and in the process covered dozens of readings. But perhaps we've never read a short story quite like Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "The Era." It's a story set in a future world after various wars and a re-organized society where genetic engineering has apparently gone to extremes, and brutal honesty has quite brutal. 

After reading "The Finkelstein 5" and now "The Era," I think we have to say something, really a lot of things at some point about the creative and intriguing ways that Adjei-Brenyah's mind works. 

Alright, I'm not even fully sure what questions to ask you because "The Era" disoriented me in unexpected and ultimately useful ways. So for now, let's do this: imagine several of us were in a room discussing this story. What should we focus on first concerning "The Era"? Why? 

Haley Scholars (Group 3) Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "The Era"

[Haley Reading Groups Spring 2022]

Since 2009, we've done this reading group and in the process covered dozens of readings. But perhaps we've never read a short story quite like Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "The Era." It's a story set in a future world after various wars and a re-organized society where genetic engineering has apparently gone to extremes, and brutal honesty has quite brutal. 

After reading "The Finkelstein 5" and now "The Era," I think we have to say something, really a lot of things at some point about the creative and intriguing ways that Adjei-Brenyah's mind works. 

Alright, I'm not even fully sure what questions to ask you because "The Era" disoriented me in unexpected and ultimately useful ways. So for now, let's do this: imagine several of us were in a room discussing this story. What should we focus on first concerning "The Era"? Why? 

Visualizing Data with the FLOAT Method

Kenton Rambsy

My colleague Peace Ossom-Williamson and I conceived of the FLOAT Method to organize the interrelated but disparate steps involved in creating a data story. FLOAT stands for the following:

I’ve taught a range of classes at the intersections of Black Studies and Digital Humanities (DH), over the past five years, where I guide students’ engagements with Tableau Public to transform datasets into interactive visualizations. Even though the content may vary from class-to-class, the FLOAT Method provides a useful framework for them to organize and analyze data.

The FLOAT method provides a common framework for students looking to transform quantitative and qualitative findings into visual aids. From conceiving of a research question to finally transforming data into a visualization, this five-step process involves cycling through the activities, all of which can take drastically different amounts of time, effort, and focus.

This process emphasizes the importance of developing useful research questions. A good research question establishes the boundaries of a given project and therefore helps to guide the research process by dictating what type of data and analysis a person will perform in a given project.

We published an Open Educational Resource (OER) last Fall, The Data Notebook. In this publication, we discuss the FLOAT Method in detail. Because all DH projects are drastically different, we hope this process will help bring some uniformity to students outlining a given project and even for professors looking for a useful way to evaluate data visualizations.

Blogging about poetry in February 2022

[Related content: Blogging about Poetry]

• February 20: Allison Joseph's books and publishers

• February 1: Blogging about poetry in January 2022