J's Theater (Free subscription) | 10/25/2009
October is almost over, and it feels like it has raced by. It's been wonderful and at times disorienting to be back east for the entire month; usually I'm well immersed into the dizzying hive of the fall quarter, but so far I've had a chance to think and read and write (and yes, write letters of recommendation!) and go to conferences, with breathers in between every activity, and it feels almost unreal....
Carol Peters (Free subscription) | 10/01/2009
[my thanks to Emily Lloyd for this list] Despite my raging joy that Heather McHugh has won half a million dollars, I deplore prize giving of all kinds because of the implied value judgments, politics, social bias, cultural pressure, category exclusions, etc. Below is a chronological list of poets who have won the MacArthur. How many of these poets have you heard of? How many have you read? How many...
NewBlackMan (Free subscription) | 09/30/2009
Well before I knew who Ishmael Reed, Henry Dumas and bell hooks were, it was William Safire (and Russell Baker) who stimulated my love of words, language and writing. William Safire, Political Columnist and Oracle of Language, Dies at 79 By ROBERT D. McFADDEN William Safire, a speechwriter for President Richard M. Nixon and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist for The New York Times who also...
NewBlackMan (Free subscription) | 09/14/2009
hat-tip to Jeff Chang & Salamishah Tillet Staging Impropriety: Jes Grew at the VMAs by Mark Anthony Neal Twitter and Facebook were aglow, seconds after Kanye West’s most recent flare-up, this time snatching the microphone from a bewildered Taylor Swift, who had just won the “Best Female Video” award at MTV’s VMAs. West was ostensibly “protesting” Swift’s...
LETRAS LATINAS BLOG (Free subscription) | 09/08/2009
As part of the weeklong celebrations of the Institute for Latino Studies’ tenth anniversary… Letras Latinas presents “Sharing Our Stories, Sharing Our Poems” featuring ALICIA GASPAR DE ALBA ORLANDO RICARDO MENES September 17, 2009 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM 210 McKenna Hall University of Notre Dame Biographical Sketches: Alicia Gaspar de Alba has published three novels (2007,...
Miami New Times | Complete Issue (Free subscription) | 09/02/2009
“Jeho-vah is why we are in Vietnam,” Ishmael Reed wrote in his 1969 Neo-Hoodoo Manifesto , an anti-religion, pro-religious tract that serves as the touchstone for the exhibition “NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith,” showing at the Miami Art Museum. Reed's essa...
Hrag Vartanian (Free subscription) | 08/11/2009
The NY Times has a great piece on their “Room for Debate” blog which solicited opinions on Woodstock and it’s cultural/political significance. My favorite is by the great multiculturalist author Ishmael Reed and while I don’t make it a habit to post whole items, I couldn’t resist in this case since I found Reed’s piece insightful and [...]
naijablog (Free subscription) | 08/04/2009
Brother Reed don't mince his words none. Kongi gets a mention or three. Reed is smart enough to leave a door open for Skip to walk through at the end...
Me, Myself An Eye (Free subscription) | 08/03/2009
I haven't said much about the Henry Louis Gates arrest for a lot of reasons amongst them, I am too busy between working out and then pressing out my hair after . But after a couple of interesting talks with some dear friends and reviewing a couple of very interesting articles on the interwebs, I thought " Who am I to remain quiet on the matter?" Wouldn't be Toldja-like at all. I finally went...
The Rap Sheet (Free subscription) | 07/29/2009
Blogger Jake Murdock reminds us that today would have been the 100th birthday of African-American author Chester Himes, who wrote the Coffin Ed John and Gravedigger Jones police series as well as other non-crime books. Poet-novelist Ishmael Reed has been quoted as saying that he “taught me the difference between a black detective and Sherlock Holmes.” Himes died in 1984.
The Hartford Guardian (Free subscription) | 07/28/2009
Post-Race Scholar Yells Racism By ISHMAEL REED in Counterpunch Now that Henry Louis Gates’ Jr. has gotten a tiny taste of what “the underclass” undergo each day, do you think that he will go easier on them? Lighten up on the tough love lectures? Even during his encounter with the police, he was given some slack. [...]
Collecting my Thoughts (Free subscription) | 07/28/2009
Officers white and black, male and female, stand behind Crowley . There was no racism. "He [Obama] should have recused himself." Remembering Gates' book: "I'm praying fervently that we will be spared a national Teachable Moment arising from the Gates Affair. But at least one good thing (for me, at any rate) has come out of the brouhaha: it prompted me to go to my bookshelves for the...
西儒 ─ The Western Confucian (Free subscription) | 07/27/2009
Not until reading Ishmael Reed 's piece — Post-Race Scholar Yells Racism — have I felt the need to link to anything on this topic, everything I had read being equally stupid. While there's much to disagree with this graduate of my alma mater , there's also much food for thought. An excerpt: Given the position that Gates has pronounced since the late eighties, if I had been the arresting...
American Leftist (Free subscription) | 07/27/2009
From the : Maria DeLourdes Oregel hasn't found work since her harvesting job petered out last year, her husband's hours at the local chicken farm have been cut by a third, and even though she feeds her children meat only once a week, she runs out of cash before the end of each month.In one dreadful year, this dusty city in the heart of the most productive agricultural region in the nation has become...
Stop Me Before I Vote Again (Free subscription) | 07/27/2009
A nice item by Ishmael Reed on Counterpunch about America's "Leading black intellectual" (you mean that's not Cornel West)? Now that Henry Louis Gates Jr. has gotten a tiny taste of what “the underclass” undergo each day, do you...
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