Category Archives: African American Lit

A Reading List is Not a Syllabus, Part III

See part I and part II. Another text I found to be impactful and which might enhance an anti-racist reading list is Ralph Ellison’s posthumously published short story “Boy on a Train.” It is a somewhat unique story in its … Continue reading

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A Reading List is Not a Syllabus, part II

For the first book post in this series about the anti-racist reading list, I’d like to discuss Harriet Jacobs’ 1861 book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which you can find and read for free on the Internet. … Continue reading

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White People: We Don’t Need to be Everywhere

This is a post directed at fellow white people – I want to talk a little bit about spaces created expressly for people of color (POC), and why we need to stuff any objections to these kinds of spaces. I … Continue reading

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Booker T. Washington Checks Out of a Hotel…

1903 was a particularly difficult year for African Americans, as described in Douglas Blackmon’s book, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. In that year alone, at least 85 African Americans were … Continue reading

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2017 Reading List

Happy New Year! We are officially in 2018. I find New Year’s Eve/Day to be a bit of a downer holiday. Celebrating the onward march of time can be a little depressing, but mainly as an academic, January is hardly … Continue reading

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Alt, Schmalt

You may have heard about the new show concept announced from the creative team behind the HBO hit Game of Thrones. The new show, to be produced for HBO, is called Confederate and is set in a “grisly dystopian future” in which the … Continue reading

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Checking Out THE STREET

I’ve been teaching Richard Wright’s Native Son for years in my American Literature since 1914 course. (See related posts under the tag for “Native Son”) But because the book has so many problematic components–rape, murder, violence against women, a really lagging … Continue reading

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Fences…Meh?

This is going to sound awfully petty, or snobbish, but I finally got around to watching Fences, the filmed adaptation of the August Wilson play from 2016. Directed by and starring Denzel Washington, it essentially adapts the 2010 Broadway revival in … Continue reading

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A New Native Son, Part 2

Read Part 1 here As promised, I wanted to address a few more things regarding the proposed upcoming adaptation of Richard Wright’s Native Son. First, the way the novel links to our current political situation, and second, what Suzan-Lori Parks, the … Continue reading

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A New Native Son, Part I

Content Note – discussion of fictional rape and murder follows. THIS IS NOT A DRILL, Y’ALL: Variety is reporting that Richard Wright’s novel Native Son will be adapted for film by Rashid Johnson and Suzan-Lori Parks. And I’m not sure I can effectively … Continue reading

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