Black Woman Gossip (Or, Ten Great Black Women’s Story Collections)

Black women can certainly tell a story. And where others are more subdued or might strain unto artificial performance and nearly-rehearsed expression, such embellishments to a tale are attributes we can't help but deliver automatically. While the privileged classes were fortunate enough to bask in the glamour of the novel and epic poems they created using the … Continue reading Black Woman Gossip (Or, Ten Great Black Women’s Story Collections)

The Way We Will Celebrate Them Today

Today, January 15th, 2014, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been 85 years old.  It is arguable that, in this age of globalization and its increased emphases on the heightened role Americans should play in African diaspora nations and the increasingly cosmopolitan approach writers must take to expand their audiences, too many times we scramble past … Continue reading The Way We Will Celebrate Them Today

The Best Black & African-American Books of 2013

2013 was a phenomenal year in literature for Black/African-American authors as well as the readers who love them. From a thirtysomething Chicagoan who re-defined the art of the 'rant' in her first book of essays (Samantha Irby's Meaty) to a respected non-fiction author trying her hand for the first time at a novel (Rebecca Walker's Ade: A Love … Continue reading The Best Black & African-American Books of 2013

Bush Mamas: A Black Film Gives Birth to Sociohorror

  Professor, Writer and Director Haile Gerima’s 1975 student thesis film Bush Mama premiered on the independent and student film circuit a year before I was born. I was born in the small-town Midwest: Kankakee, Illinois, a town most people have not heard of and can barely pronounce when they do. Once I was born, I … Continue reading Bush Mamas: A Black Film Gives Birth to Sociohorror