Category Archives: African-American literature

Nonsecular: William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison

April 19, 2014 Toni Morrison says in a Paris Review interview: “I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come.”   … Continue reading

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Malcolm X’s Reading

April 3, 2014 I’m always a little suspicious when people make a big point about what books they’ve read, when they throw around big name like Schopenhauer, Kant, Nietzsche.   But Malcolm is pretty scrupulous.   Of Herodotus, he writes: “I … Continue reading

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The Cosmopolitan Vernacular

February 6, 2014 Not an oxymoron, but a genetic condition, as Sheldon Pollock argues, a local tongue globalized in its emergence and globalized again in its circulation. Is that why so many African-American authors began with dialect poetry? Not only … Continue reading

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Banjo: Pete Seeger, Claude McKay

January 29, 2014 Of course he played the guitar as well, maybe even primarily the guitar, but I’ll always think of him with a banjo, that humble instrument brought over by the slaves, its simple form cradled in his, looking … Continue reading

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Passing On: Amiri Baraka, Suzan-Lori Parks, Claudia Rankine

January 22, 2014 James Baldwin probably felt a tinge of jealousy at the sight of Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, and Toni Morrison at his funeral. Thousands of people there, and those three in particular, so eloquent in their tribute, but … Continue reading

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Amiri Baraka’s luck

January 15, 2014 He must have been one of the most photographed – certainly in the 60s, and probably long after that. But the picture that’s most stuck in my head is actually one in USA Today, taken late in … Continue reading

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New James Baldwin letters

January 1, 2014 The 100 letters recently acquired by the Beinecke Library are not to famous people, just Baldwin’s friends.  The letters to Painter began in 1954, when his play “The Amen Corner” opened at Howard, and came up to 1964, … Continue reading

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Equiano’s Turkey

November 28, 2013 Yes, according to Mark Forsyth, the Thanksgiving bird is named after a country 4429 miles away. But not the first to be so named.  In fact, the original turkey was a guinea fowl from Madagascar, brought to … Continue reading

Posted in Africa, African-American literature, Afro-Asian alliances, Americas, Atlantic, Diaspora, Turkey, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Faulkner’s Harlem Renaissance

November 20, 2013 This past week I was teaching Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Passing.  I’d never assigned them before,  but they couldn’t have been better — for my “Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner” class. How else to contextualize Light in August?  Not … Continue reading

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Writers getting old: Ashbery, Angelou, Morrison

November 13, 2013 I was standing at the very back, and saw only a wall of people in front.  I’d also missed the introduction.   For most of reading, all I got was the voice, surprisingly strong, vigorous, the voice … Continue reading

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