#African-American literature

[t0rschlusspan1k]

Not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour - and in the oddest places! - for the lack of it.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (1956)

[lionofchaeronea]

And all things were transfigured in the day But me, whom radiant beauty could not move; For you, more wonderful, were far away, And I was blind with hunger for your love. -Claude McKay, "Summer Morn in New Hampshire"

[newyorkthegoldenage]

The New Negro: An Interpretation, edited by Alain Locke, cover by Winold Reiss, 1925.

The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925) was an anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays on African and African-American art and literature. It was edited by Alain Locke, the first African-American Rhodes Scholar, who obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard and who taught at Howard University for 35 years. The book is considered by literary scholars and critics to be the definitive text of the Harlem Renaissance. It included Locke's title essay, "The New Negro," as well as nonfiction essays, poetry, and fiction by Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Eric Walrond, among others. The anthology showed how Blacks sought social, political, and artistic change. Instead of accepting their position in society, Locke saw the "New Negro" as championing and demanding civil rights. His anthology also sought to change old stereotypes and replace them with new visions of Black identity that resisted simplification. The essays and poems in the anthology mirrored real-life events and experiences.

Photo: winoldreiss.org

[lilianeruyters]

Percival Everett || James

Booker Prize Shortlist 2024 James received raving reviews. The re-write of Huckleberry Finn was lauded for being ‘Gripping, painful, funny, horrifying, a multi-level entertainment, a consummate performance to the last.’ I can agree with many of these: I found the novel at times painful, funny and horrifying, I failed to find it gripping however. I agree that James contains many levels, I am not…

[healthyhabitjournal]

Dive into the heart of African-American literature with our latest article on the unforgettable Zora Neale Hurston. Uncover the legacy that reshaped the literary world and continues to inspire today. From gripping narratives to empowering themes, see why Hurston's works are more than just stories—they're a movement. Your journey into profound literary significance starts here! #AfricanAmericanLiterature #ZoraNealeHurston

[readersmagnet]

American't: The Corporate Plantation by King Bell

King Bell’s powerful book, “American’t,” delves deep into the challenges of six Black men in The Corporate Plantation. Through their eyes, you will gain a unique perspective on the struggles of being Black in a country that seems to be against you. This novel will make you question your American citizenship in a way that is both funny and moving.

Learn about what it’s like to be Black in America. Grab a copy at www.americant.theauthorkingbell.com.

[mimi-0007]

For the ppl in the back!!

[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.

[haveyoureadthispoll]

[spoiledbratblog]

[chaoticsoft]

Toni Morrison, 1974.

Photographer: Waring Abbott

[t0rschlusspan1k]

I had thought of suicide when I was much younger, it would have been for revenge, it would have been my way of informing the world how awfully it had made me suffer.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (1956)

[lionofchaeronea]

Current reading is Harlem Shadows, the landmark 1922 poetry collection by the Jamaican-American author Claude McKay (1890-1948). To breathe new life into traditional forms like the sonnet, at a time when Modernism and free verse were overwhelmingly dominant, is impressive. To write of intense emotions--alienation, grief, rage--in a beautiful way is no less impressive. To do both at once is astonishing, and that is what McKay did. His work is an undying cri de coeur against racial injustice in both his native and his adopted countries, and it stands as one of the crowning achievements of the Harlem Renaissance.

[dearlyjess]

starting a new journal (!!) on this lovely december morning, and dipping in and out of this gayl jones’s butter.

[cavalierzee]

Malcolm X With Keffiyeh

Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it’s against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it’s against the oppressor. You don’t need anything else.” (Malcolm X)

“The zionist argument to justify Israel’s present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history.”(Malcolm X)

“Did the Zionists have the legal or moral right to invade Arab Palestine, uproot its Arab citizens from their homes and seize all Arab property for themselves just based on the “religious” claim that their forefathers lived there thousands of years ago? Only a thousand years ago the Moors lived in Spain. Would this give the Moors of today the legal and moral right to invade the Iberian Peninsula, drive out its Spanish citizens, and then set up a new Moroccan nation … where Spain used to be, as the European zionists have done to our Arab brothers and sisters in Palestine?…” (Malcolm X)

Oil Painting by: Safia Latif

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