A Sense of Doubt blog post #1775 - AFROPUNK: Goodbye 2019 and Good Riddance
I am so happy that in 2019 I discovered AFROPUNK. In fact, I liked it so much that I created a category for it.
I have several end of the year posts in the works, so this is the first of quite a few.
Here's a collection of end of the year round ups from AFROPUNK for 2019.
I love this stuff. Great writing, great pics and art, great thoughts and culture, greatness in every way!
I haven't even had time to review everything, but I have reviewed a great deal of the content and some of its best writers like Clarkisha Kent.
I try to keep up, but then my step-daughter chided my wife and I for "missing the Lizzo train" after seeing the "breakout artist of the year" on Saturday Night Live hosted by Eddie Murphy.
In fact, this is a good place to share a Lizzo video.
Thank you for existing AFROPUNK!!
Happy end of the year everyone!
All the text and art that follows was created by the great folks at AFROPUNK and not by me.
As usual, we subscribers are encouraged to share and spread the good words and great art!
https://afropunk.com/2019/12/2019-goodbye-and-good-riddance/
2019: GOODBYE AND GOOD RIDDANCE
By Erin White
December 3, 2019
Well, what can I say about 2019 other than, at least it wasn’t 2016? Here is a VERY condensed list of the shit that pissed me the fuck off in 2019.
LIAM NEESON HUNTS BLACK MEN
2019 was the year we found out that Liam Neeson was actually a violent racist after he confessed to hunting random Black men on the street. The impulse, he said, was triggered after a friend was allegedly raped by a Black man. After finding this out, Neeson loitered outside a pub for a week waiting to cross a Black man he could murder. Extremely misguided, alarming, and totally racist, Neeson exposed himself for the violent bigot that he is for “hoping some ‘Black bastard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could…kill him.”
R. KELLY, IN GENERAL
But more specifically the horrific claims of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse allegedly inflicted on countless girls and women as revealed in dream hampton’s Surviving R. Kelly doc-series. While the documentary was the most detailed look inside Kelly’s sick world of sadism we’ve ever seen, we knew he was — at the very least — degrading minors. And that alone should have been enough for us to shut him down. And the fact that he was enabled to abuse so many people is utterly sicking.
THE JUSSIE SMOLLETT FIASCO
Ooo, lord Jesus. In hindsight, how banana sandwich was the entire Jussie Smollett fiasco? From the MAGA hats to “I fought the fuck back,” Jussie Smollett’s claims of being jumped by two (white? Black?) dudes in the middle of a cold winter night in Chicago just never really fit. But when a grand jury in Chicago indicted Smollett on 16 felony counts, that didn’t really fit either. It’s hard to say which part of this story pissed me off more? Jussie’s clearly embellished narrative (allegedly) or Chicago police pretending like they have any integrity.
JAY-Z MARRIES THE NFL
He couldn’t stay faithful to Beyoncé, so what made us think he’d stay faithful to us? I’m kidding…but, I’m not. Jay-Z is clearly a ridiculous person who makes terrible decisions. And while I accepted the fact that he and Bey are capitalists just like the next billionaire couple, I was naively hoping he wasn’t the greediest capitalist pig. Though details are scant, The New York Times reported that Jay-Z and Roc Nation’s partnership with the NFL would include consulting on live performances, including the Super Bowl, and the social justice initiative Inspire Change. Sigh. To be fair, it’s not super clear just how much money Hov stands to make from the partnership, but it’s not like he needs it. Why isn’t he investing in Black community infrastructure directly? Oink, oink.
GINA RODRIGUEZ
Gina, Gina, Gina. We were all rooting for you, girl. What happened? And what is wrong with you? Being more generous than I believe she deserves, I can understand why Gina is so thirsty to be Black culture adjacent. We are the litty. And the community we have as Black women, particularly, is unlike any other. But, girl, you gotta chill. Chill when it comes to dropping the casual “nigga” in a sing-a-long. Chill when it comes to minimizing Black voices. Chill with using your beige-skinned dad as your nigga pass. You ain’t gotta lie to kick it. But you do have to cut this shit out.
CELEBRITY COLLEGE ADMISSIONS BRIBERY RING
This year, a handful of celebrities were caught in a college admissions bribery ring where they were alleged to have paid-off officials, fudged records, and rigged tests in order to have their mediocre offspring attend fancy colleges. The entitlement. The cheating. The crime. The fact that America’s elite use illegitimate means to access the right spaces isn’t shocking, but the sheer flat-out unworthiness of their mediocre students was pretty startling. Just imagine: you’re wealthy, have access to all the best tutors, programs, coaches, and schools, and your child still can’t get into a good college. Maybe school isn’t their thing, Aunt Becky.
@EMOBLACKTHOT COMES OUT AS CATFISH
Whew, chile. @emoblackthot was a heavily-followed Twitter account run by virtual therapist and tastemaker who catfished their queer and POC following into believing they were a Black woman. The real account runner, Isaiah Hickland, a cisgender Black man, came clean about his false identity in a lengthy interview with Paper. As @emoblackthot, Hickland went as far as to make tweets about treating period cramps and raising money for himself under the guise of being a queer Black woman in need. He also had numerous “friendships” with celebrities like Kehlani and Lil Was X which I’m sure he used for clout and legitimacy to better scam more folks. Allegedly.
Black Twitter is so poppin’ majorly in part to the cultural Black girls and women cultivated online. So much so that pretending to be a Black or ambiguously brown girl has spawned an infestation of “blackfishes” and catfishes trying to elevate themselves off of who we actually are. Sucks when it be ya own people.
LUXURY BRANDS PRETENDING NOT TO KNOW BETTER
2019 was another year where luxury fashion brands tried to push blatantly racist wears on those who could afford it. Early in the year, both Gucci and Burberry were called out for tasteless designs that depicted racist propaganda imagery and anti-Black violence. In Gucci’s case, it was an $890 Black sweater that featured a cut-out mouth with big red lips. You know, a lot like a Golliwog. It had already been on sale at Gucci for six months by the time they removed it from inventory. Burberry, on the other hand, decided to send a noose worn with a hoodie down the runway — really. It’s awkward when your high-paid fashion designers can’t design clothes without alluding to Black pain and the violence perpetrated against us.
HATERS OF THRONES
Okay, look. I’m not about to gaslight you by saying that the handful of episodes known as the final season of Game of Thrones were super good. They weren’t. With the fridging of the only named Black woman character of the entire show, Missandei, the wholly unnecessary burning of King’s Landing, and subsequent murder of the main female character, and the nothingness that ended up being the Night King, season 8 was…kinda trash. But it was OUR trash. We got CleganeBowl. We got Lady Brienne and Jamie Lannister, Arya and Gendry. The Red Woman finally died! Cersei died, even if it was wasn’t nearly as satisfying as we deserved. It wasn’t SO bad and didn’t deserve to be written all the way the fuck off.
Y’ALL FOR IGNORING LEAVING NEVERLAND
As a documentary connoisseur and complete nerd, I’ve seen an unreasonable amount of true crime documentaries. And Leaving Neverland by director Dan Reed is hands-down one of the most disturbing examinations of systematic child abuse told in this format. And despite how harrowing and disturbing the accounts re-told by alleged Michael Jackson victims Wade Robson and James Safechuck are, the documentary just came and went. And even after all we’ve learned from R. Kelly’s misconduct, we as a community are still unwilling to believe victims of famous Black predators. And I find that those who are most adamant about Jackson’s innocence to be the same people who refused to watch the documentary. Look into James Safechuck’s eyes and tell me what he’s saying is bullshit.
2019: THE YEAR IN AFROPUNK STORIES
Damn, that was a long year. And… daaaaamn, we published a lot of great work. To celebrate the fact that it’s almost over, we decided to compile a few of the pieces we felt proudest of by writers we love working with. Kings and queens. Angels and demons. Current events and history. Hate-read and love-read. Utopias and dystopias. Art and politics. (But not music — we’re gonna do that list tomorrow.)
Follow the links to more of these great wordsmith’s great words (for AFROPUNK and elsewhere).
The list appears in chronological order.
Enjoy!
2019: MOVING BEYOND QUEER REPRESENTATION
By Taylor Hosking
December 13, 2019
Back in July, Pose star Indya Moore was the keynote speaker at ESSENCE Festival — and the first trans woman to have a speaking gig at the 25 year event. But, in the most 2019 moment, Moore didn’t allow the festival to pat itself on the back simply for giving them the platform. “It’s hard for me to find honorableness in being the first because honestly, it should have already been happening,” they said. “So many incredible and revolutionary Black trans women came before me. They should’ve received the attention I am getting now.” This year more mainstream platforms in the Black community and beyond started uplifting LGBTQ voices, but those queer and trans leaders didn’t sit satisfied with representation for representation’s sake. They set out to make it count, speaking truth to power wherever they saw fit.
Today it’s becoming advantageous for companies, media outlets, and the entertainment industry to be more LGBTQI+ inclusive. Interrogating masculinity now sells GQ covers and hot new brands like Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty linegerie line can make the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show irrelevant with a streamable NYFW show that simply highlights diversity (including having Laverne Cox model in the show and bisexual singer Halsey perform). Allyship isn’t as heroic when brands or celebrities have a lot to gain by queering their image (a tension that came to a head during this year’s 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots when many queer people fought to reclaim pride from corporate advertisers and return it to its activist roots). During the Trump era’s continued attacks on LGBTQI+ rights, there’s a lot at stake if the buck stops at apolitical representation or rainbow-flag colored marketing plans. The challenge this year was largely about how the LGBTQI+ community would use the positive momentum of our times in meaningful and impactful ways.
One of the ways celebrities started making up for lost time was through sharing long-held confessions and reflecting on queer histories that shaped our culture. Beyoncé has been giving us queer-friendly visuals for years, but during her acceptance speech at the GLAAD Media Awards she revealed that she was inspired largely by her Uncle Johnny who was gay and died of AIDS. Robyn Crawford also shared her story of repressed queer romance with Whitney Houston, leading to a cathartic Oprah Magazine interview between her and Lena Waithe. Waithe explained that she saw herself in Crawford when she “didn’t have the language to understand who [she] was yet.” And even newcomer rapper Lil Nas X came out of the closet during World Pride month (albeit not without fellow Black male celebrities like Young Thug warning he could lose fans).
There were also celebrities finding new ways to use their spotlight for activism. Indya Moore powerfully wore earrings with the framed faces of 16 trans women who were murdered in 2019 while they accepted the Daily Front Row’s Cover of the Year award for their groundbreaking Elle cover. And their fellow Pose star Billy Porter used his clout to host celebrities and ballroom talents at a reprisal of the Love Ball, one of the first HIV/AIDS charity events that pulled the wealthy into the fight back in 1989 and brought them face to face with the trans and gay POC community. Porter also won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for portraying an HIV+ character on Pose.
But the most long-term way the community took advantage of the cultural interest in LGBTQI+ life this year was through securing new major deals to tell their own stories. Pose was already making history by letting the ballroom community retell its story after decades of appropriation. But LGBTQI+ TV producers this year really got the bag, flipped it, and tumbled it (queue Quavo). Janet Mock went from being a first-time TV writer and director on Pose to securing a three-year Netflix overall deal in June to create a slate of TV shows and films that will likely each center trans characters (the deal also makes her the first out trans woman to secure such a large content creator deal in Hollywood). And Lena Waithe, who moved her overall deal from Showtime to Amazon, will be adding a groundbreaking new BET series Twenties to her slate of shows early next year. The star-studded passion project she wrote in her twenties about her own experience will be the first major adulting comedy with a Black queer woman lead.
The year wasn’t all roses though, of course. It did kick off with Kevin Hart’s non-apology tour about his old homophobic tweets where his argument that cancel culture is too extreme proded an underlying issue that many feel LGBTQI+ advocates are becoming too demanding. Dave Chappelle later made that argument more directly in his August Netflix stand-up special Sticks and Stones where he painted trans people as entitled and delusional for insisting that their concerns are prioritized. The resulting viral internet war between people criticizing or defending Chappelle’s jokes showed how divided society still is on what level of respect LGBTQI+ people (the “Alphabet people” according to Chappelle) deserve. It also became a sobering wakeup call that transphobic jokes have real consequences when a trans woman Chappelle talked about in the special’s Q&A, Daphne Dorman, killed herself less than two months later. Adding to an ongoing list of 21 plus trans women of color who have been murdered or died in 2019.
Despite some of the homophobic and transphobic tragedies of the year, LGBTQI+ people have been, by and large, gaining bigger platforms to confront society’s biases against them. It’s possible the divide between LGBTQI+ advocates and critics who say they’re too demanding could get worse before it gets better. But unlike other moments in history when straight celebrities have largely profited off of appropriating our culture, today the community is taking charge of their own story and building lasting ways to stay in the room even if their popularity dies down. LGBTQI+ icons are deciding it’s not enough just to be the first of their kind welcomed into the higher rungs of their industry or to feel celebrated for beating the odds. They’re reaching further than representation, challenging the mainstream — and in some cases sacrificing their likeability — to create change leading with the fierce honesty of a ticking time bomb on their back. They’re not just looking for a seat at the table. They’re looking to run the boardroom at the head of the table.
https://afropunk.com/2019/12/2019-the-year-in-black-visual-culture/
2019: THE YEAR IN BLACK VISUAL CULTURE
By Touré
December 11, 2019
We’re living in the golden age of Black visual culture, a time when there are lots of authentic movies and television programs about the Black experience being made by powerful Black creators and starring compelling Black talent. We’ve been in this golden age for a few years now. Its given us films like Black Panther, Moonlight, Get Out, and Sorry To Bother You as well as shows such as Insecure, Empire, Black*ish, Queen Sugar, and Dear White People. Most importantly, we now have a class of creators who seem entrenched in the industry, and able to create pretty much whatever they want — Ryan Coogler, Ava Duvernay, Jordan Peele, Shonda Rhimes, Kenya Barris, Issa Rae, Donald Glover, and Lena Waithe, among others. Together they’re building a broad and fascinating era of Black visual culture that, at its best, feels organic and made for us, not for the white gaze. In this respect, it has been an extraordinary year. Here’s my top 10 pieces of Black visual culture (both movies and TV shows) of 2019.
10. A Black Lady Sketch Show
Robin Thede’s brainchild is consistently funny and smart in the way it mines Black culture for comedy, celebrating us and the Black women’s experience. The show gives love to Black ladies without looking down on Black men. Standout sketches: “Get the Belt,” “Invisible Spy,” “Angela Bassett Is the Baddest Bitch,” and “Hertep Masterclass.” Catch it on HBO and don’t miss the funny spin-off Quinta Versus.
9. The Black Godfather
Reggie Hudlin’s Netflix documentary about the consummate connector and entertainment business savant Clarence Avant took us inside an amazing life journey. One Black man of considerable interpersonal gifts rose to become a power broker, then fell, then rose again. Avant’s talent is in his ability to link people who could do business together and through that skill he has changed the world. If you’ve ever wondered how the powerful become powerful, this will give you some idea of how it’s done.
8. Pose
Janet Mock’s heartfelt nighttime soap/dramedy gave me all the feelings each and every week. Over 60 minutes, I would laugh, maybe cry, definitely worry, then exhale. Mock and her crew pulled me deep into a world I have never known — and when I watched it, felt out of place in, but in a good way, out of my comfort zone, given a chance to learn about an important Black subculture and the lives of people different from me. I love that it’s a show about trans women that gives us a slew of actual trans women acting, and writing, and telling their story through deeply compelling characters. And I couldn’t help falling in love with several of those characters, especially Hailie Sahar’s Lulu and Indya Moore’s Angel.
7. Native Son
Rashid Johnson’s modernized, punk rock vision of Richard Wright’s iconic novel was powerful visually — which makes sense because Johnson is one of the best visual artists alive. But Johnson and star Ashton Sanders brought new life to Bigger Thomas, whose story is just as powerful and relevant today as it was all those decades ago.
6. Black Mirror: Striking Vipers
The Black episode of Black Mirror gives us Yahya Abdul-Mateen and Anthony Mackie bonding over a video game, as boys do, but once inside the game their bond takes on another level and their figurative fighting leads to passionate virtual sex between their avatars. Which leads to questions of whether they are gay in real life, or in love with each other, and if what they really want is to have sex in the offline world.
5. Homecoming: Beyonce
Bey brought HBCU culture to the desert, infusing Coachella with a deep and profound sense of Blackness. I stayed up late to watch the livestream of the concert, but the film about the concert is so much more powerful, because Beyonce’s poise and grace onstage masks all the work and grit it took to mount that epic performance. This was a comeback show — her return to the stage after childbirth — and it was inspiring to watch the Herculean effort it took to get back to the high standard she sets for herself, the endless rehearsal and sacrifices and the time away from her kids. She seemed more like a professional athlete fighting to get back to the top level of her sport, a family woman trying to reclaim her old self.
4. When They See Us
Ava Duvernay takes us through the depth of the pain that the Central Park 5 and their families had to live after being falsely accused for raping a jogger in New York in 1989. And while it’s hard to walk that long road with them, it’s powerful to watch their pain at that moment in history when they’re triumphant in life. This mini-series like a blues — giving witness to the hell these boys escaped now that they’ve been paid millions by New York City, and their side of the story has been accepted as the truth — with one of our greatest living filmmakers telling their tale on the biggest platform. That context makes it a testament to the strength of the human spirit and the possibility of achieving justice, even if you’re Black boys who’ve been convicted of heinous crimes and all but left for dead. If they can rise again from such depths, who among us can’t hope to see the sun again?
3. Queen & Slim
Lena Waithe and Melina Matsoukas’s film is a metaphor for living while Black. It’s about finding a way to keep on, surviving, making a way out of no way, as white supremacy imposes itself on you — and sustaining yourself by finding moments of joy in the Black community, finding allies who help you and love you, while still remembering that every brother ain’t a brother. It’s a polarizing film but I found it powerful, gripping, heartbreaking, beautiful, and unforgettable.
2. Watchmen
Regina King’s Sister Night is as badass as they come—she’s like the daughter of Shaft and Pam Grier—and she’s fiercely battling white supremacists as they rise in power with help from the baddest man on the planet, a “Black” Dr. Manhattan. Watchmen might be the Blackest show ever made by a white man. It’s all about race and it makes clear that the traumas of our racist past still have a huge, enduring impact on the present. I came to the HBO show without having read the graphic novel or understanding the movie, so don’t worry if you’re not steeped in the past history of this iconic franchise, you can love this show without knowing all of that.
1. Us
Jordan Peel’s magnum opus is far more ominous and complex than Get Out which is great but almost cartoonish by comparison. Us is a metaphor for America where the underclass rises up to take back the country, it’s a horror film built on a brilliant concept, and it’s a movie anchored by an amazing pair of performances by one of America’s greatest actors, Lupita Nyongo. This is a film where the matriarch is the dominant figure and the savior, where dark skin is shown in its luxurious beauty, and where white people are the first to die. I do not like horror films but Peele doesn’t make hardcore horror, but he is trying to frighten you into seeing the world in a new way.
Your personal list may differ. You may have Waves or Dolemite or Just Mercy or Last Black Man In San Francisco or Harriet or Queen Sugar or Wu Tang: Of Mics and Men or Godfather of Harlem on it, and that’s cool. It’s amazing to have a moment in Black visual culture when there is so much great work. The fact that there is such a diversity of choices tells me that we as a community are winning. And from the insiders I’ve spoken to, this isn’t a fad. There are so many Black creators and insiders entrenched in the system, they can’t be easily flushed away, which means this golden era isn’t ending any time soon.
https://afropunk.com/2019/12/2019-the-year-in-black-literature/
2019: THE YEAR IN BLACK LITERATURE
By Danielle Jackson
December 19, 2019
As the optimistic multiculturalism of the Obama era gave way to a global wave of ethnocentrism and tense borders, Black writers met the urgency with a fervor to remember, to unbury, to speak into the silences of the record. What the next decade will look like — who will hold power, how they’ll wield it, who will be held accountable for our shared losses — is yet to be determined. But it’s storytellers who shape the contours of what is possible.
Who gets to tell the story? And what will it be? In the United States, with a presidential election on the horizon and an impeachment behind us, the next years promise much wrangling over these questions. I felt it brewing at the start of 2019, when the six-episode, Lifetime mini-series Surviving R. Kelly aired out a litany of abuse allegations against the R&B singer — some, “open secrets” since the early 1990s. The documentary’s stories, built upon years of reporting in the Chicago Tribune, encouraged Kelly’s record company to drop him, and for prosecutors from three different states to hold him accountable for crimes committed against Black girls and women. Later that same month, the most diverse Congress in history was sworn in. And in June, Ta-Nehisi Coates delivered an aching, eloquent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in favor of H.R. 40, the bill to study reparations for slavery. In it, he confronted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who’d insisted, “none of us currently living are responsible” for slavery’s horrors:
“Coup d’états and convict leasing. Vagrancy laws and debt peonage. Redlining and racist G.I. bills. Poll taxes and state-sponsored terrorism. We grant that Mr. McConnell was not alive for Appomattox. But he was alive for the electrocution of George Stinney. He was alive for the blinding of Isaac Woodard. He was alive to witness kleptocracy in his native Alabama and a regime premised on electoral theft. Majority Leader McConnell cited civil-rights legislation yesterday, as well he should, because he was alive to witness the harassment, jailing, and betrayal of those responsible for that legislation by a government sworn to protect them. He was alive for the redlining of Chicago and the looting of black homeowners of some $4 billion. Victims of that plunder are very much alive today. I am sure they’d love a word with the majority leader.”
Confrontations would continue. Over the summer and fall, thousands took to the streets in San Juan and Port-au-Prince demanding corrupt bureaucrats resign. September’s youth-led climate strikes drew nearly five million protesters around the world urging policies to calm the warming, rising seas.
Talking back, using language to speak into existence new worlds has long been bedrock to the Black literary tradition. Much new work troubles genre boundaries and categories, living in between — and through — multiple means of communicating. MacArthur fellow Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, uses a method Hartman calls “critical fabulation” to tell the stories of Black women in urban centers from the turn of the 20th Century. It reclaims the histories of our cities. National Book award winner Sarah M. Broom engages a similar endeavor with The Yellow House, the history of her family’s shotgun house becomes a history of New Orleans and New Orleans East, a coming of age tale, a chronicle of the climate crisis, a remembrance of Hurricane Katrina. This urge to unbury animates fiction too: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, or Jacqueline Woodson’s Red at the Bone, which, like HBO’s adaptation of the DC Comics series Watchmen, reimagines the 1921 destruction of Tulsa. Eve Ewing retells the story of Chicago’s race riots of 1919 in her latest collection of poems.
Other writers have turned to interiors, layering flesh and texture onto their characters, conjuring a thrilling sense of intimacy in new, exciting ways. Imani Perry, in her memoir Breathe, employs the direct address. Saeed Jones uses a poet’s lyricism in the Kirkus Prize-winning memoir, How We Fight For Our Lives. Incisive essay collections like National Book Award finalist Thick, by Tressie McMillan Cottom and Emily Bernard’s Black is the Body blend personal and critical writing and are sophisticated, complex documents of how we live today and what it all might mean.
Perhaps the most notable literary event of the past year was a loss. On August 5th, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison died at the age of 88. She was the author of eleven works of fiction (including Sula, Beloved, and Song of Solomon), nearly a dozen volumes of nonfiction, children’s books with her son, and a libretto. Morrison made a career editing books by Lucille Clifton, Gayl Jones, Toni Cade Bambara, and Henry Dumas before publishing her first novel.
These 25 books from 2019, arranged loosely by theme, stood out and spoke to me, for their beauty, for their clarity about the past and the moment we’re in and the way they point to a future:
Living History and Historical Fiction: An Urge to Unbury
Jacqueline Woodson’s Red at the Bone jumps back and forth in time, between three generations and remembers the Tulsa massacre. Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys fictionalizes the real-life horrors of the Dozier School for Boys, deep in Florida, and opens with a literal excavation. In his fiction debut, The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates brings to life Hiram, a young man living during slavery with great gifts of memory and “Conduction.” Angie Cruz’s Dominicana brings us Ana, a teenager in the mid-1960s, who leaves the Dominican Republic for Washington Heights to live with her new, much older husband. Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King reimagines the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, in which Benito Mussolini’s armies sent Haile Selassie into exile until the send of the Second World War.
The Intimacy of Real Lives: Memoirs, Essay Collections, Oral History
Bridget Davis’s memoir, The World According to Fannie Davis, recounts her years growing up with her mother, a well-known Numbers runner in Detroit of the 1960s and ‘70s. In The Yellow House, Sarah M. Broom tells her family’s story, of life in New Orleans from the 1900s to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Imani Perry’s Breathe is fashioned as a letter to the author’s sons, on how to thrive, despite white supremacy. In How We Fight For Our Lives, Saeed Jones’s remembers growing up in Lewis, Texas with his gorgeous, protective mother. Jaquira Diaz remembers a fraught relationship with her own mother in Ordinary Girls and moves through her family’s years in Puerto Rico and Miami. The Pretty One: On Life, Pop Culture, Disability and Other Reasons to Fall in Love With Me by Keah Brown is a collection of essays about pop culture, that wonders about the paltry representation of disabled Black people. I’m Lying But I’m Telling the Truth is Bassey Ikpi’s memoir (in essays) about her struggles with bipolar disorder and anxiety; Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Thick: And Other Essays deftly merges theory with folksiness; Black is The Body features Emily Bernhard’s essays asking and answering questions about the material conditions of Blackness; Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women is E. Patrick Johnson’s inventive oral history/surrealist ventures though Black queer life; Reniqua Allen’s It Was All A Dream: A New Generation Confronts the Broken Promise to Black America includes dozens of interviews with Black millennials about their lives and hopes.
The Near Future and the Recent Past:
The dark comedy We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin imagines the horrors of a future South; Kiley Reid’s debut, Such a Fun Age, animates the internet era and the fault lines of all kinds of interracial relationships; Candice Carty-Williams’s Queenie gives us a 25 year old Black British heroine and her romantic mishaps in a contemporary moment; The Booker Prize winning Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernadine Evaristo tells linked stories of twelve Black British women and moves through time.
Literary Recoveries and Criticism:
Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary, edited by Nina Collins, is the second volume of works by Kathleen Collins and includes her screenplay, “Losing Ground,” previously unpublished plays and short stories, and several journal entries. Zora & Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal by Yuval Taylor aims to uncover why two literary titans ended their friendship after years of letters and collaborations.
Books About Our Music:
Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest is (occasional AFROPUNK contributor) Hanif Abdurraqib’s cultural history of the hip-hop group. The Beautiful Ones, Prince’s memoir, completed after the artist’s death, is a collage of his handwritten notes and personal photos and the account of its creation by editor and collaborator Dan Piepenbring. Robyn Crawford’s long awaited memoir, A Song for You: My Life With Whitney Houston, offers an intricate, tender account of Houston’s rise to stardom and love of Black music.
On Black Glamour:
The scholar Tanisha C. Ford’s Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girl’s Love Letter to the Power of Fashion is a memoir that uses fashion to tell a social history of the Black Midwest, especially during the latter years of the 20th century. Along with Deborah Willis, Ford also contributed to the monograph, Kwame Brathwaite: Black is Beautiful; Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem uncovered the many evolutions of Harlem; The New Black Vanguard, by curator and critic Antwaun Sargent, looks at a new, cosmopolitan cadre of fashion Black photographers like Tyler Mitchell and Awol Erizk; The Rihanna Book, published by Phaidon, is a 500-page “visual autobiography” of the singer, with glamorous behind the scenes photos of her at work and play and ephemera from her life before stardom
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1912.28 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1638 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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