What ignited our spirits about the work was the awesome imagining of the unrecognizable language it presented in the midst of drama we could recognize.
Category: Black Women
It’s Hard Out Here For a Sister…
If Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant have leaped forth as dark angels to provide us with long-overdue narratives to outline and verify real patterns of mistreatment and injury black men endure, then “Rudy’s” puzzling treatment on the same network she helped bolster so gives us similar analogy for black womahood in America.
We Had Some Phenomenal Fiction in 2014.
It feels wondrous to see a Black American woman at the helm of both literary and mainstream fiction in America (Roxane Gay), and we are all happy for Jacqueline Woodsons' National Book Award win. However, I wondered where were big, majestic books by my Black American sisters at front of the bookstore and many more smaller books Black American women really had to talk about?
Are You a Joyce Vincent?
In this National Blog Posting Month, I decided to pick my favorite work so far on my blog Negression. My eulogy of a total stranger, Joyce Vincent, remains the most personal piece of writing I have ever done publicly for the sheer emotional response I had to her story's resonance in my life at the point when I wrote it. I think this chilling black female version of a "Sex in the City" tale will always stick out to me and beg attention. It is something I wish I had never had to write, because that means it would have never happened. But since I did have to write it, it was a privilege to learn about myself and my life and what I need to do for myself and for others through the pain of another who was unable to.
Harsh History: A Gem of Our Libraries
The Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection, housed in Chicago’s Carter G. Woodson Library, is an invaluable display of the flowering of Black history and culture within a Northern, urban environment galvanized by the energy of hundreds of thousands of post-war Black migrants from the South.
*On The Color Purple and Beloved film adaptations…
I remember when The Color Purple movie came out in 1986. To have a beautiful and serious movie, that was not about Blacks killing each other or acting stupid but truly featured the story and amazing acting, was a big event. Oprah Winfrey was already a sort of star, and the other actors were people we knew as well. … Continue reading *On The Color Purple and Beloved film adaptations…
10 Black Women’s Book-to-Film Adaptations*
Maya Angelou, Alice Walker and Gloria Naylor were early trailblazers for cinematic adaptations of Negress stories. Adaptations of their autobiography, novel and stories catapulted their work and names to national prominence their Harlem Renaissance and Black Power Movement predecessors were unable to enjoy in their lifetimes.
negression 