I am so excited and overwhelmed with the fabulous things Black American people are doing in the arts now. Everywhere I turn, there's something new to be proud of. A picture can be worth a thousand words. Not sure if I have to credit any of these photos. Forgot where I got them from...but don't worry … Continue reading Good Black Stuff…
Posts
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
Patriarchy Gone Awry: The White Exploitation in The SnowTown Murders
On the one hand, The Snowtown Murders is an unquestionably brilliant depiction of a provincial environment of chain smoke and gray pallor that I recognize very well--whereby the simple offerings of eggs, bacon, toast, sausages and coffee can cement the beginning of a kinship stronger than many blood relatives... But on the other hand, the absolutely unnecessary (and true crime) atrocities against human beings that The Snowtown Murders depicts is satisfactorily unfamiliar to anything I have ever known in my life.
My First Grays
It is startlingly appropriate that I was introduced to my first gray hair this past evening, at about a quarter to 7 p.m. in the basement of the Logan Center for the Arts on the University of Chicago campus right around the corner from my home. I came out of a bathroom stall to wash … Continue reading My First Grays
The People Like Us Who Live in Places Like This*
6-month old Jonylah Watkins, shot to death 5 times in Chicago, March 11, 2013 My mind hadn't really caught up, yet. If not for my new early evening coffee habit, I still might not know that the 6-month old child who was shot to death in a Chicago drive-by suffered her fatal injuries right around the … Continue reading The People Like Us Who Live in Places Like This*
Women Should Tell Women’s Stories: on the films of the capital punishments of Wanda Jean Allen and Aileen Wuornos
In 2002, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus was forced to end her documentary on the last three months of Oklahoman Wanda Jean Allen, a twice-convicted murderer. Allen was the sixth woman put to death in the United States after the 1977 reinstatement of the death penalty. The Execution of Wanda Jean depicts the frantic and pathetic clemency pursuit in the Bible … Continue reading Women Should Tell Women’s Stories: on the films of the capital punishments of Wanda Jean Allen and Aileen Wuornos
Good Job Goodreads…
My self-preservationist tendency is to spurn online social media as much as humanly possible for my generation. It seems that Facebook is the new way to pass the kids' school pictures around...you know, those goofy and darling snapshots stuck on little squares with jaggedly scissored edges? I miss those. Now, I must log in and … Continue reading Good Job Goodreads…
negression 