#African American writers

[uwmspeccoll]

Copper Sun

Last week we brought you Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen's (1903-1946) first major poem The Ballad of the Brown Girl. Today we present Cullen's second collected book of poetry, Copper Sun, published in New York by Harper & Brothers in 1927, with illustrations by the same artist who illustrated Ballad, the unrelated Art Deco artist Charles Cullen (1887-?). Copper Sun is a collection of over fifty poems that explore race, religion, and sexuality in Jazz Age America, and particularly the possibility of unity between white and black people, as exemplified in the two Cullens, one black, the other white.

View more work by Countee Cullen.

View other books illustrated by Charles Cullen.

View other Black History Month posts.

[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"

[dgtor-writes]

They Cloned Tyrone Review

They Cloned Tyrone is one of my favorite visual works of the past year, and I wish my favorite movie review/analyst channels covered it. There's still time but its unlikely.

The use of blaxploitation aesthetics alongside deceptively in-depth character writing was what really grabbed me and drew me in, alongside the soundtrack and audio mixing, which had just the perfect vibes I was looking for to influence Gore Gambit. Obviously, there is some concerning themes in it.

Anything that encourages hotep speculation automatically gives me bad vibes. While this could be a hyperbolic interpretation of how systemic racism functions, I'm uneasy with the "conspiracy" undertones of the text. To paint every systemic injustice and fallout of what African-Americans currently experience, alongside the social control and denigration of black bodies, as a singular government experiment rather than an intricate and centuries long system, felt misguided at best, and dangerous at worse.

The casual misogyny wasn't addressed or reprimanded by the text, rather placing its redress on the central female character as an "exceptional woman moment". There was no real commentary spared to how misogynoir (both a function of white supremacy and a community issue) feeds into black sex work and prostitution. The pimp was played as a silly but lovable character, with no thought spared to how dangerous, violent, and abusive these men are towards black women, not to mention how those men are often family members or boyfriends.

Overall, it was a strong movie, competently wirtten with ambitious themes that got away from it. I was originally going to post appreciation for its aesthetics onto my art blog, but after giving this a read-through, it's much more suited here.

[louandlillie]

So glad to see the #New York Times mention my new book on #Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras yesterday! See this page to see if I am reading or signing in an area near you:

[artemismatchalatte]

2023 Pinterest 50 Book Reading Challenge

10. Book with a One Word Title

Quicksand by Nella Larsen

[sceneztheseries]

Meet Tre’ — The Problem-maker

Full Name: Tre’Jour Jermaine Hopkins

Age: 14 (May 5th, 2000)

Classification : Freshman

Meet Tre’.

The main character and new kid who arguably faces the most adversity throughout his first year of high school. Will he let tough times get to him or will it allow him understand different perspectives?

He loves to put himself out there whether it’s dressing in latest sneakers or showing off his talents at hooping. These are good things but he tends to let his need for attention and materialistic ways gear him into bad situations. He’s learning all this it’s just a matter of how many times he goes through the same cycles.

[sbrown82]

Marsha Hunt, circa 1970.

[uwmspeccoll]

The Ballad of the Brown Girl

The Ballad of the Brown Girl was Harlem Renaissance writer Countee Cullen's (1903-1946) first major poem, and this is the first edition of only 500 copies, published in New York and London by Harper & Brothers in 1927, with illustrations and page decorations by the unrelated Art Deco artist Charles Cullen (1887-?). Brown Girl is Countee Cullen's revision of a 17th-century English ballad based on a folk tale featuring two women with different color hair. Cullen's revision alters the descriptions to suggest they are of different races, establishing tensions between romance, segregation, and social hierarchy.

The white Charles Cullen grew up in Brooklyn and was living and working in Manhattan when he met the Black Countee Cullen around 1926 and illustrated four books for the writer: Copper Sun (1927), The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927), an illustrated second edition of Color (1928), and The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929). It seems a significant coincidence that the two would share a last name, but the stars seem to have been aligned. For example, Countee Cullen's birth name was Countee LeRoy Porter and Charles Cullen was born in LeRoy, New York. Coincidence? We don't think so.

View another work by Countee Cullen.

View another book illustrated by Charles Cullen.

View other Black History Month posts.

[yourdailyqueer]

Tourmaline

Gender: Transgender woman

Sexuality: Queer

DOB: 20 July 1983

Ethnicity: African American

Occupation: Activist, artist, screenwriter, director, producer

[leyllethecreator]

Writing Tip #2: Sometimes you've just gotta be like Nike

The best cure for writers' block I've found is to keep writing even when you have no inspiration. Push through the garbage, and you'll often find that ideas start coming to you, but if you insist you're uninspired, you will be. This is part of the reason why it's so great to write to prompts. Game-fying the struggle gets you out of your head a bit.

Go for a walk and tell yourself you have to pick one random thing to write about. Open the dictionary, select a word off the page you opened to and try to do something with that. As Isaac Asimov said, sometimes doing something mindless like watching a movie helps.

Basically the more stimuli you surround yourself with, the more likely you are to find inspiration. You can generate that stimuli yourself just by yeeting words onto a page - you 100% can inspire yourself.

And remember that nobody ever said you have to keep the draft. If it's garbage, it's not like you suddenly destroyed your story idea for good - it's been poisoned by one bad draft and is dying of failure-itis.

I'm creating new prompts every week you can check out every Saturday if you're looking for inspo. I also highly suggest watching a show you like or a new show, listening to music or "the dictionary method" if you're ever feeling stumped.

[adventuresofalgy]

Algy flew a short distance downstream, to a quiet spot where the burn trickled peacefully through a wee level channel it had carved for itself on its meandering journey to the sea.

The moorland was dressed in all its autumn splendour now, displaying its finest colours of the year in a jubilant burst before it rested through the darkest months of the year. Algy had never much cared for the brash greens of the short-lived Highland summer, and in the depths of winter the land too often looked drained of colour entirely, clothed only in washed-out browns and dirty greys. But in October it came into its glory, especially when the sun broke through after a period of rain.

Surrounded by the invigorating fragrance of bog myrtle, which rose from the wee bush on which he had found a perch, Algy contemplated the beauty of the landscape, reflecting that those dreary poets and writers who had likened autumn to a period of decay and death must have been blind indeed, both literally and metaphorically, for not only was the fall of the year magnificent in itself, but it invariably ended in a comforting period of rest and joyful festivities before leading once again into another beautiful and uplifting spring…

It’s all a farce,—these tales they tell About the breezes sighing, And moans astir o’er field and dell, Because the year is dying. Such principles are most absurd,— I care not who first taught ’em; There’s nothing known to beast or bird To make a solemn autumn. In solemn times, when grief holds sway With countenance distressing, You’ll note the more of black and gray Will then be used in dressing. Now purple tints are all around; The sky is blue and mellow; And e’en the grasses turn the ground From modest green to yellow. The seed burrs all with laughter crack On featherweed and jimson; And leaves that should be dressed in black Are all decked out in crimson. A butterfly goes winging by; A singing bird comes after; And Nature, all from earth to sky, Is bubbling o’er with laughter. The ripples wimple on the rills, Like sparkling little lasses; The sunlight runs along the hills, And laughs among the grasses. The earth is just so full of fun It really can’t contain it; And streams of mirth so freely run The heavens seem to rain it. Don’t talk to me of solemn days In autumn’s time of splendor, Because the sun shows fewer rays, And these grow slant and slender. Why, it’s the climax of the year,— The highest time of living!— Till naturally its bursting cheer Just melts into thanksgiving.

[Algy is quoting the poem Merry Autumn by the late 19th century African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose parents were both emancipated slaves and who was one of the very first African American writers to achieve recognitions and success.]

[twixnmix]

James Baldwin and civil rights activist Jerome Smith outside of the ANTA Theater during the production of Baldwin’s play "Blues for Mister Charlie" in New York City, 1964.

Photos by Bob Adelman

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Wanda Coleman

Wanda Coleman was born in 1946 in Los Angeles, California. Coleman wrote twenty books of poetry and prose. Her writing, regarded as prescient and innovative, focused on racism and on the marginalization that came with living in poverty in her home state of California. Coleman is considered a transformative figure in the literary landscape of LA. Her book Bathwater Wine won the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and her book Mercurochrome was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award for Poetry.

Wanda Coleman died in 2013 at the age of 67.

[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…

[kcyars520]

[sbrown82]

“I remember an incident from my own childhood, when a very close friend of mine and I, we were walking down the street. We were discussing whether God existed. And she said he did not. And I said he did. But then she said she had proof. She said, ‘I had been praying for two years for blue eyes, and he never gave me any.’ So, I just remember turning around and looking at her. She was very, very Black. And she was very, very, very, very beautiful. How painful. Can you imagine that kind of pain? About that, about color? So, I wanted to say you know, this kind of racism hurts. This is not lynchings, and murders, and drownings. This is interior pain. So deep. For an 11 year-old girl to believe that if she only had some characteristic of the white world, she would be okay. [Black girls] surrendered completely to the master narrative. I mean the whole notion of what is ugliness, what is worthlessness. She got it from her family, she got it from school, she got it from the movies — she got it everywhere; it’s white male life. The master narrative is whatever ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else. The master fiction, history, it has a certain point of view. So, when these little girls see that the most prized gift that they can get at Christmastime is this little white doll, that’s the master narrative speaking: “This is beautiful. This is lovely, and you’re not it.”

Toni Morrison on what inspired her to write her first novel, The Bluest Eye.