Category Archives: Ethnicity

2014 Conference

April 12, 2014 All these things that I didn’t know before the conference: Daniel Venegas’ Don Chiopote, the Creole folklore collected in Louisiana by the Federal Writers’ Project, and (I’m ashamed to say) Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of  Loss, writing the story … Continue reading

Posted in African-American music, Creole, Ethnicity, Food | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Animals in Chicago

November 6, 2013 It seems right that the theme this year for the Chicago Humanities Festival should be “Animals: What Makes us Human.”   This city, after all, used to be called (and maybe is still called) hog butcher for … Continue reading

Posted in Americas, Animals, Atlantic, Diaspora, Environmentalism, Ethnicity, indigenous communities, Race, Spanish, World history | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Housemates: Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, John Hersey

September 11, 2013 I can’t find pictures of them together, just houses that they shared. 713 Windsor Lane, a modest cottage in a writer’s compound in Key West, shared by John Hersey, his wife, and Ralph Ellison, whose Invisible Man … Continue reading

Posted in African-American literature, Black-Jewish alliances, Ethnicity, Friendship, Twentieth century literature | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Robert Pinsky, Ginza Samba

July 24, 2013 For years I hadn’t gone much beyond his translation of the Inferno.  I’d noticed a couple of things I didn’t like (might even have gone looking for them), and just stopped there, his own poetry getting all … Continue reading

Posted in African-American music, Black-Jewish alliances, collaboration, contemporary poetry, digital humanities, Ethnicity, jazz, mixed races, Music, Race, slavery | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Langston Hughes’s Children Literature

May 31, 2013 My class, “Regional, National, Global,” has no special focus on children’s literature, but it does seem to come up a lot. I think it’s because of Langston Hughes — the uncertain borders of his poetry, holding a … Continue reading

Posted in Africa, African-American literature, African-American music, Children's literature, Cities, collaboration, Educational institutions, Ethnicity, Experimental poetry, jazz, Modernist poetry, Music, print medium, Twentieth century literature, World history | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Brazil: Karen Tei Yamashita, Elizabeth Bishop

April 24, 2013 Both write about human efforts that come to nothing.   Bishop’s Manuelzinho begins bravely, planting gardens that ravish the eye: beds of  cabbages edged with red carnations, lettuces with alyssum.   But then “silver umbrella ants arrive,/ or it … Continue reading

Posted in Americas, Asian-American literature, Brazil, Contemporary novel, Environmentalism, Ethnicity, Genre, Global South, indigenous communities, lyric, Magical realism, Poetry, Science fiction, Twentieth century literature, world literature | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Linda Hogan, Herman Melville: People of the Whale

April 10, 2013 The Native Americans have always been there, of course.   The very name of the ship brings up their ghostly presence, for “Pequod, you will no doubt remember, was the name of a celebrated tribe of Massachusetts … Continue reading

Posted in Animals, Asia, collaboration, Contemporary novel, Ethnicity, Native-American literature, Nineteenth-century literature, oceans, Race, WAr | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Michelle Cliff, Adrienne Rich: Animal Sound

April 3, 2013 It’s surprisingly difficult to find a photo of the two of them.   In fact I found only one.   Yet they’ve been together since 1976, a companionship of almost 40 years. Maybe photos aren’t the point? … Continue reading

Posted in Africa, African languages, Animals, Auditory field, Black-Jewish alliances, Caribbean literature, Contemporary literature, Diaspora, Ethnicity, Media, Music, peripheral networks | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Adrienne Rich, June Jordan: bracketing war

March 27,  2013 Adrienne Rich wrote the intro to the collected poems, June Jordan’s, talking mostly about meter, sound patterns, vernacular riffs. Of “March Song,” she writes: “Here she breaks what is actually a dactylic metrical line so that the … Continue reading

Posted in African-American literature, African-American music, Black-Jewish alliances, collaboration, contemporary poetry, Ethnicity, Jewish literature, Middle East | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Samuel Delany, Marilyn Hacker?

March 20,  2013 He met her on the first day, Bronx High School of Science, September 1956.   They got married five years later (in Detroit — Michigan was one of the two states where interracial marriage was not illegal). … Continue reading

Posted in African-American literature, Black-Jewish alliances, collaboration, Contemporary novel, contemporary poetry, Educational institutions, Ethnicity, Science fiction, Twentieth century literature | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment