#African American Authors

[uchicagoscrc]

James Baldwin at 100: Archival Encounters at UChicago’s SCRC

Born August 2, 1924, in Harlem, New York, James Arthur Baldwin rose from the harsh conditions there to become a major figure in American literary arts, a key voice for African American civil rights and social justice, and a tireless witness and advocate for humanity. His life, ideas, and works have had a significant impact on many. His fiction and essays made real the human condition and shamed those who failed the test of time and love, critical themes found at the heart of most of his work. Today marks the 100th anniversary of his birth.

An interesting history of events found in the  Student Government Records, with James Baldwin at the heart of it. A single folder concerning a little-known incident with Baldwin’s novel, Another Country. Students organized to intervene in the dispute over the removal of the novel from a required reading list at Wright Junior College.

Interestingly, in the end, the novel remained on the list, an option was made for students who did not want to read the book, a new instructor was assigned to the course for the next term, and the previous instructor who assigned the book was given a two-month vacation. There was also mention in the news reports that depending on how this issue was resolved, the college could have lost its accreditation.

Other collections at SCRC that contain archival materials created by or composed about James Baldwin: Campus Publications, Chicago Review Records, David Ray Papers, International Association for Cultural Freedom Records, Layle Silbert Papers, and Robert W. Spike Papers.

[dreamy-conceit]

There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.

— Zora Neale Hurston

[thegoblinpit]

this was SO MUCH FUN. "If you are silent about your pain they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it." -Zora Neale Hurston This project is available on my redbubble! https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/150622215?asc=u

[creepykuroneko]

I want to read Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower. The problem is it's the first book in the Earthseed Trilogy and she died before she could write the Third book. I don't want a fucken cliffhanger. Does anyone have any advice?

[rockislandadultreads]

Mystery Titles by African American Authors: a list

Jackal by Erin E. Adams

A young Black girl goes missing in the woods outside her white Rust Belt town. But she’s not the first—and she may not be the last. . . . It’s watching. Liz Rocher is coming home . . . reluctantly. As a Black woman, Liz doesn’t exactly have fond memories of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white town. But her best friend is getting married, so she braces herself for a weekend of awkward and passive-aggressive reunions. Liz has grown, though; she can handle whatever awaits her. But on the day of the wedding, somewhere between dancing and dessert, the bride’s daughter, Caroline, goes missing—and the only thing left behind is a piece of white fabric covered in blood. It’s taking. As a frantic search begins, with the police combing the trees for Caroline, Liz is the only one who notices a pattern: a summer night. A missing girl. A party in the woods. She’s seen this before. Keisha Woodson, the only other Black girl in school, walked into the woods with a mysterious man and was later found with her chest cavity ripped open and her heart missing. Liz shudders at the thought that it could have been her, and now, with Caroline missing, it can’t be a coincidence. As Liz starts to dig through the town’s history, she uncovers a horrifying secret about the place she once called home. Children have been going missing in these woods for years. All of them Black. All of them girls. It’s your turn. With the evil in the forest creeping closer, Liz knows what she must do: find Caroline, or be entirely consumed by the darkness.

As the Wicked Watch by Tamron Hall, T. Shawn Taylor

When crime reporter Jordan Manning leaves her hometown in Texas to take a job at a television station in Chicago, she's one step closer to her dream: a coveted anchor chair on a national network. Jordan is smart and aggressive, with unabashed star-power, and often the only woman of color in the newsroom. Her signature? Arriving first on the scene—in impractical designer stilettos. Armed with a master's degree in forensic science and impeccable instincts, Jordan has been able to balance her dueling motivations: breaking every big story—and giving a voice to the voiceless. From her time in Texas, she's covered the vilest of human behaviors but nothing has prepared her for Chicago. Jordan is that rare breed of a journalist who can navigate a crime scene as well as she can a newsroom—often noticing what others tend to miss. Again and again, she is called to cover the murders of Black women, many of them sexually assaulted, most brutalized, and all of them quickly forgotten. All until Masey James—the story that Jordan just can't shake, despite all efforts. A 15-year-old girl whose body was found in an abandoned lot, Masey has come to represent for Jordan all of the frustration and anger that her job often forces her to repress. Putting the rest of her work and her fraying personal life aside, Jordan does everything she can to give the story the coverage it desperately requires, and that a missing Black child would so rarely get. There's a serial killer on the loose, Jordan believes, and he's hiding in plain sight.

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke

When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules--a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home. When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders--a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman--have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes--and save himself in the process--before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt. A rural noir suffused with the unique music, color, and nuance of East Texas, Bluebird, Bluebird is an exhilarating, timely novel about the collision of race and justice in America.

All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris

Everyone has something to hide... Ellice Littlejohn seemingly has it all: an Ivy League law degree, a well-paying job as a corporate attorney in midtown Atlanta, great friends, and a “for fun” relationship with a rich, charming executive—her white boss, Michael. But everything changes one cold January morning when Ellice goes to meet Michael… and finds him dead with a gunshot to his head. And then she walks away like nothing has happened. Why? Ellice has been keeping a cache of dark secrets, including a small-town past and a kid brother who’s spent time on the other side of the law. She can’t be thrust into the spotlight—again. But instead of grieving this tragedy, people are gossiping, the police are getting suspicious, and Ellice, the company’s lone black attorney, is promoted to replace Michael. While the opportunity is a dream-come-true, Ellice just can’t shake the feeling that something is off. When she uncovers shady dealings inside the company, Ellice is trapped in an impossible ethical and moral dilemma. Suddenly, Ellice’s past and present lives collide as she launches into a pulse-pounding race to protect the brother she tried to save years ago and stop a conspiracy far more sinister than she could have ever imagined…

[rachel-sylvan-author]

"Long Way Down" by Jason Reynolds

[wondernwriter]

[southernmermaidsgrotto]

Hoodoo, Rootwork and Conjure sources by Black Authors

Because you should only ever be learning your ancestral ways from kinfolk. Here's a compilation of some books, videos and podcast episodes I recommend reading and listening to, on customs, traditions, folk tales, songs, spirits and history. As always, use your own critical thinking and spiritual discernment when approaching these sources as with any others.

Hoodoo in America by Zora Neale Hurston (1931)

Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston (1936)

Tell my horse by Zora Neale Hurston (1938)

Let Nobody Turn Us Around: An African American Anthology by Manning Marable and Leith Mullings, editors (2003)

Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition by Yvonne P. Chireau (2006)

African American Folk Healing by Stephanie Mitchem (2007)

Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies by Faith Mitchell (2011)

Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System by Katrina Hazzard-Donald (2012)

Rootwork: Using the Folk Magick of Black America for Love, Money and Success by Tayannah Lee McQuillar (2012)

Talking to the Dead: Religion, Music, and Lived Memory among Gullah/Geechee Women by LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant (2014)

Working the Roots: Over 400 Years Of Traditional African American Healing by Michele Elizabeth Lee (2017)

Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston (2018)

Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals by Luisa Teish (2021)

African American Herbalism: A Practical Guide to Healing Plants and Folk Traditions by Lucretia VanDyke (2022)

These are just some suggestions but there's many many more!! This is by no means a complete list.

I recommend to avoid authors who downplay the importance of black history or straight out deny how blackness is central to hoodoo. The magic, power and ashé is in the culture and bloodline. You can't separate it from the people. I also recommend avoiding or at the very least taking with a huge grain of salt authors with ties to known appropriators and marketeers, and anyone who propagates revisionist history or rather denies historical facts and spreads harmful conspiracy theories. Sadly, that includes some black authors, particularly those who learnt from, and even praise, white appropriators undermining hoodoo and other african and african diasporic traditions. Be careful who you get your information from. Keeping things traditional means honoring real history and truth.

Let me also give you a last but very important reminder: the best teachings you'll ever get are going to come from the mouths of your own blood. Not a book or anything on the internet. They may choose to put certain people and things in your path to help you or point you in the right direction, but each lineage is different and you have to honor your own. Talk to your family members, to the Elders in your community, learn your genealogy, divine before moving forwards, talk to your dead, acknowledge your people and they'll acknowledge you and guide you to where you need to be.

May this be of service and may your ancestors and spirits bless you and yours 🕯️💀

[gennsoup]

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

Alice Walker, The Color Purple

[leyllethecreator]

Writing Tip #1: never underestimate the power of ugliness

Never underestimate the power of ugliness.

Uglying up your prose can be just as powerful as prettying it up.

Using words like bleeding, vomiting, to describe basic actions like water running out of a faucet can add a sense of violence or agony to a scene:

"Plunging his hands into the ice cold water vomiting from the sink..."

"Plunging his hands into the ice cold water bleeding from the sink..."

Using very ugly imagery to describe normal things can also work well in tandem with using prettied up (especially when it's exaggeratedly so) imagery for ugly things.

"Plunging his hands into the ice cold water vomiting from the sink, he wipes the last delicate dribbles of golden bile from his lower lip"

[ukdamo]

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: the Chicago writer's mural: James Baldwin

[travsd]

The James Baldwin Centennial

James Baldwin (1924-1987) was born in Harlem 100 years ago today. The one-two punch of the films I’m Not Your Negro (2016) and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) brought Baldwin’s genius roaring back to the front of our consciousness during those horrible Trump years, to further inflame our already blazing pyres of indignation. After the latter film I fell into a rabbit hole of old TV clips on…

[nickysfacts]

All racism has ever done is slow down the creation of beauty🖋️

🇺🇸👩🏽‍🦱📖

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

[haveyoureadthispoll]

Today's feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. That feminists refuse to prioritize these issues has only exacerbated the age-old problem of both internecine discord and women who rebuff at carrying the title. Moreover, prominent white feminists broadly suffer from their own myopia with regard to how things like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with gender. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others?