A short, select list of African American Biographies

A few biographies 

• 1973: The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright by Michel Fabre
• 1977: Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography by Robert Hemenway
• 1986: The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902-1941: I, Too, Sing America by Arnold Rampersad
• 1986: The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II: 1941-1967: I Dream a World by Arnold Rampersad
• 1988: Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius: A Portrait of the Man by Margaret Walker
• 1993: W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Race by David Levering Lewis
• 2000: W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963 by David Levering Lewis
• 2001: Richard Wright: The Life and Times by Hazel Rowley
• 2002: Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd
• 2003: Harriet Jacobs: A Life by Jean Yellin
• 2004: Alice Walker: A Life by Evelyn C. White
• 2007: Ralph Ellison: A Biography by Arnold Rampersad
• 2010: John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism by Keith Gilyard
• 2011: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
• 2013: Nikki Giovanni: A Literary Biography by Virginia C. Fowler
• 2017: Chester B. Himes: A Biography by Lawrence P. Jackson
• 2018: The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart
• 2018: Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
• 2018: Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry
• 2020: The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne

• 2021: Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay by Shanna Greene Benjamin 

• 2021: Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer by Kate Clifford Larson

• 2021: Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America by Keisha N. Blain

Related:
• Malcolm X, Biography Work, and the University of Georgia

• A Bibliography of Black Writer Biographies

Malcolm X, Biography Work, and the University of Georgia

On November 17, I'm talking Malcolm X and biography work in a program sponsored by the University of Georgia. 

Below are materials related to my talk:

• A short, select list of African American Biographies 

• A roundup of Malcolm X books 

Related: 

• A Bibliography of Black Writer Biographies

Data Storytelling: A Crucial Gateway to DH Scholarship

By Kenton Rambsy

Data storytelling is a skillset everyone in Digital Humanities (DH) should consider. Similar to data journalism, the process of data storytelling revolves around analyzing and filtering large bodies of organized information for the purposes of creating a narrative with visualizations that provide insight on a particular subject.

Data storytelling brings together numerical findings, visuals, and narrative to facilitate a researcher’s presentation of large sums of information in palatable ways. By merging these three components, researchers make metrics useful by contextualizing data points. Readers can gleam insight since a goal of data storytelling is to reduce unnecessary fodder and focus on essential findings.

Data storytelling also enables practitioners to acquire general data analytic skillsets that can be applied to other research projects. Engaging in the process of data storytelling, people are given a chance to refine their technical skillsets such as scraping data, cleaning data, and using visualization software to transform it into visualizations. In my experiences, researchers can learn more about data collection, coding, and computational analysis while harvesting data.

With several emerging subfields in DH, it’s more important than ever that we identify general skillsets that are useful to researchers across multiple fields such as English, History, Political Science, and even sociology. Different fields are driven by various research methodologies. Therefore, finding a common ground can help spur activity in DH by focusing on key concepts and skills that can unite researchers from disparate fields.

Data storytelling proves to be most valuable when it helps audiences gain new insight and fresh perspectives on a particular subject or even when it inspires readers to take action. Data alone is just a collection of numbers and rarely useful without added
context. Visual narratives use data to create meaning. Design elements ranging from font shape and color to charts and hyperlinks of other websites all play a role in how researchers engage with their audience and relay information.

Haley Scholars (Group A1) Rion Amilcar Scott's “On the Occasion of the Death of Freddie Lee"

[Haley Reading groups Fall 2021]

Rion Amilcar Scott's "On the Occasion of the Death of Freddie Lee" focuses on the experiences of people on a slave-like rice farm. The protagonist becomes increasingly troubled that the group of laborers are prevented from addressing the death of Freddie, who died working and remained facedown in the crops for some time.

The story is eerie, disturbing, and at times gruesome as we consider what it means that a dead body remains on the ground and people are forced to continue working. 

What did you find most interesting, unsettling, or noteworthy about this story? 

Haley Scholars (Group B) Rion Amilcar Scott's “On the Occasion of the Death of Freddie Lee"

[Haley Reading groups Fall 2021]

Rion Amilcar Scott's "On the Occasion of the Death of Freddie Lee" focuses on the experiences of people on a slave-like rice farm. The protagonist becomes increasingly troubled that the group of laborers are prevented from addressing the death of Freddie, who died working and remained facedown in the crops for some time.

The story is eerie, disturbing, and at times gruesome as we consider what it means that a dead body remains on the ground and people are forced to continue working. 

What did you find most interesting, unsettling, or noteworthy about this story? 

Haley Reading (Group A2) Nafissa Thompson-Spires's “Whisper to a Scream”

[Haley Reading groups Fall 2021] 

By Lakenzie Walls and Howard Rambsy II

In Nafissa Thompson-Spires's final story, “Whisper to a scream,” we meet Raina, a young black high school student who makes ASMR videos. She deals with online harassment and self-esteem issues because of unusual interests. Her routine of whispering fairy tales and stroking feathers into her microphone gives her a large online following.

In one instance, Raina receives a message from a user she suspects is one of the guys from her high school. The comment suggests she wear her “Dorsey uniform in the next 1” (119). She makes a conscious effort to ignore racist and sexist comments online. Despite the online harassment, Raina continues posting content because she “worked best in short frames, quiet silvers, fragments” (134).

There are a number of fascinating or important moments in this story. Identify just one and briefly explain why you found that one most interesting or significant to consider in a short story. Please provide a page number. 

Rion Amilcar Scott's short story vs. poetry

This semester, I'm faciliating a couple reading group where students are reading Nafissa Thompson-Spires's short story collection Heads of the Colored People (2018) and Rion Amilcar Scott's collection The World Doesn't Require You (2019). 

In the near future, I plan to write more about student engagements with those collections, but for now I  had some brief thoughts about why Scott's work has captured the interests and imaginations of a group of students. In addition to covering his book with about 200 student readers, I'm covering some of his stories with students in one of my classes -- a group that is comprised of 20 first-year collegiate black men. 

Usually in that class, we cover short stories, poems, rap lyrics, essays, and more recently, a few comic books. In the past, when I polled students about works that moved them most, they would mention the poems and rap lyrics, with many noting their interest in "real life issues." This year, however, several students highlighted short stories, in particular, Scott's "The Electric Joy of Service," a tale about a Master who creates a robot who is very much like a slave. 

Students had expressed interest in learning more about slavery, and they are interested in far out, fantastical stories, so Scott's short fiction really captivated them. Are robots like slaves, or are slaves like robots, the young men wondered? Have some of our folks, like the robot protagonist in the story, been modified by Masters to ignore history and be content with the world as it is? What kind of mind does it take to think up a story like "The Electric Joy of Service"?

That Scott's story got us to those and other questions is part of what made it so memorable and admired by the guys in the class. 

In some respects, the embrace of sci-fi elements in Scott's story represents a turn from the apparent realness of the poems and raps that students in previous classes celebrated. I sometimes wonder what leads students to value one genre over the other, such as poetry over short stories or short stories over poetry. 

In this case, perhaps Scott's story just gave the guys so much to contend with: slavery, history, a Master, a robot, science fiction, machines, technology, artificial intelligence, the idea of revolution, business partners, and betrayal. Oh, and did I mention that the story is only about 1,200 words long? The brevity of a short story for first-year students matters, especially a story with so much going on.   

And there's more. "The Electric Joy of Service" is familiar and at the same time unfamiliar to the guys in the class. They've thought and heard about things like revolution, artificial intelligence, business partners, but not in the context of a literature class.  

Related: 

• Fall reading selection: The World Doesn't Require You

Blogging about Poetry in October 2021

[Related content: Blogging about Poetry] 

• October 8: Nathaniel Mackey's Breath and Precarity

• October 1: Blogging about poetry in September 2021