By making familiar objects strange, two new books of poetry reveal the limits of overly simple critique.
Tag: African American
Paris Doesn’t Always Have To Be Burning
The documentary "Paris Is Burning" obscured the ordinary lives of queer people of color, but new footage reveals how the film could have been different.
Free Is and Free Ain’t
Freedom has always been arbitrary in a world, then and now, when the practice of capitalism requires the ongoing erosion of even the most basic rights.
“Somewhere in This Brain”: Memories of Segregation, Soul Music & “Macbeth” with Al Bell
"A song was written through me, and I say that because I didn't write it. The words were given to me."
Tele-visionary Blackness
Black folks can call into being an alternative relationship to TV, one that prompts a shift in consciousness and just possibly alters the future.
How to Subvert the Capitalist White-Supremacist University
Despite a long history of black presence and contribution, the academic space is still the stronghold of capitalist white supremacy.
Public Thinker: Tressie McMillan Cottom on Writing in One’s Own Voice
“You don’t tell children not to grow. And you don’t tell a writer not to write.”
Power, Poison, Pain, and Joy
Sitting atop a police car beneath an oversized American flag, Kendrick Lamar opened the 2015 BET awards with his single “Alright.” “We hate the po-po ...
A Black Counternarrative
Master narratives become the background music of our lives, undercurrents so ingrained that the violence they often engender is rendered unremarkable. One master narrative is the tale we tell about ...
“There Are Black People in the Future”: An Interview with Artist Alisha B. Wormsley
I think I make art because it’s what I’ve always done. It’s how I communicate my dreams. It’s how I stay alive, or rather it’s how I live ...
Academic Generosity, Academic Insurgency
During the summer of 2019, funding for the University of Alaska was slashed by the state legislature. With 41 percent of the annual budget, or $130 million ...
Writing for a Global Audience: An Interview with Poet Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Reed is one of the most significant literary figures of our time. He has ...
The Hipster
It happens every year. Besides the “Best of” lists that heave into view as early as late November, there are the conspicuous “Worst of” lists. Contrary to their tone, these lists also itemize the ...
Membership, Citizenship, and Democracy
President Trump’s pernicious attacks on nonwhite immigrants have thrust a particular theory of political membership—white nationalism—to the forefront ...
Black Speculation, Black Freedom
Many black scholars—especially those who study black life, history, and culture—would recognize an uncomfortable and familiar situation that epitomizes ...
Exile by the Bay
Imagining home is an inescapable preoccupation of disinherited people. Of all the possessions lost or denied, none is more precious than the security and feeling of belonging that a genuine home ...
Samuel Delany on Capitalism, Racism, and Science Fiction
Samuel Delany was 20 when his first novel, The Jewels of Aptor, appeared ...
A Black Counternarrative
Master narratives become the background music of our lives, undercurrents so ingrained that the violence they often engender is rendered unremarkable. One master narrative is the tale we tell about ...
Public Thinker: Adolph Reed Jr. on Organizing, Race, and Bernie Sanders
Growing up in a family of politically engaged black intellectuals in the ...
Impossible Belonging
If the sharp end of critique’s job is to name injury, then it also has a soft lining that is oriented around recovery and repair. Even if a particular critical project stays with injury rather than ...
