#Native Son

[guessimdumb]

The Long Ryders - I Had A Dream (1984)

Last tune on their debut LP, and maybe the best thing they ever did.

I had a dream last night Nobody's crying, nobody's frightened Still some hope in sight, that was last night

[chasingm00n]

Margaret Qualley & Nick Robinson in Strange But True (2019), Native Son (2019), & MAID (2021)

Now i want to see them in a full length romance film please

[userboygenius]

Margaret Qualley and Nick Robinson in NATIVE SON (2019), directed by Rashid Johnson.

[whenweallvote]

In collaboration with Black Voters Matter, we made this list of our 7️⃣ favorite books by Black authors being banned in schools and libraries across the country. Many of these helped to broaden America’s view of Black people, art, and culture.

Have you read any of these yet, and are any on your Reading List this year? Comment below with your favorites! 📚

[citizenscreen]

Canada Lee in Broadway’s “Native Son” in 1941, photographed by Carl Van Vechten. The play was directed by Orson Welles and produced by Welles and John Houseman, written by Paul Green and Richard Wright.

[quotespile]

Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed... It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.

Richard Wright, Native Son

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Tony Bennett may have been famous for singing about San Francisco, but he was a New Yorker born and bred. Born, to be specific, in Astoria, Queens, which he later said he loved more “than any place I’ve ever lived.”

When he was nine and still called Anthony Dominick Benedetto, he sang at the dedication of the Triborough (now Robert F. Kennedy) Bridge, which earned him a pat on the head from Mayor LaGuardia.

After he made it big, he and his wife established a public high school dedicated to the arts—in Astoria, of course. He named it, not after himself, but after Frank Sinatra, who had given him his first big break. Over the years he visited it frequently, often bringing surprise guests (Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, Harry Belafonte, Lady Gaga).

The Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, Astoria, Queens

For the last 25 years of his life, Tony lived in a penthouse on Central Park South and was often seen in the park with his canvas and paints.

Top photo: Tony Bennett, Twitter Bottom photo: ennead architects

[whyisstarkidfollowingmeshoo]

Source: https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/1997-1998-season/native-son/gallery/first-rehearsal/ Jeff Blim's first rehearsal photos for Native Son (2014) at the Court Theatre, Chicago. In one of his livestreams, Jeff talked about how he got the role of the social activist, Jan.

Bonus photo of Nick Lang at the opening night of Native Son.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in the light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is a commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one’s own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one’s strength. This fight begins, however, in the heart and it now had been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair.

—James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (1955)

[Robert Scott Horton]

[didierleclair]

[vagisil]

yall part one of this book so crazy

[philosophybitmaps]

[chasingm00n]

Margaret Qualley & Nick Robinson in Native Son (2019)

[userboygenius]

Ashton Sanders in NATIVE SON (2019), directed by Rashid Johnson.

[odettecarotte]

Canada Lee was Bigger Thomas, but he was also Canada Lee: his physical presence, like the physical presence of Paul Robeson, gave me the right to live. He was not at the mercy of my imagination, as he would have been, on the screen: he was on the stage, in flesh and blood, and I was, therefore, at the mercy of his imagination.

James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work

"I was, therefore, at the mercy of his imagination" (emphasis in the original)

The actor Canada Lee, as Bigger Thomas in Orson Welles' 1941 stage adaption of Richard Wright's Native Son

This passage is SO the spiritual ancestor of Avgi Saketopoulu going to see Jeremy O. Harris's "Slave Play" about 20 times, realizing that she is in the SWAY of this play, that she goes to surrender to its power over her and the audience, to allow herself to be changed by an encounter with the actors on the stage living the material. Harris's confrontational, exigent sadism inspired Saketopoulu to write about the sadism of the theater, the way it ACTS ON US.

From her book Sexuality Beyond Consent: "To explain how performance touches us, we usually turn to the interior elements it evokes: for example, we may say that it reminded us of something or that it resonated with something we have experienced or that it spoke to a particular part of ourselves. I want to highlight what is usually disregarded by this overemphasis, to draw our attention to how art or performance acts on us and away from which part of the self/memory it evokes. Those who do not just suffer through difficult art but who savor the anguish and vulnerability that some performance engenders may endure aesthetic experience. Such experience can leave one transformed."

[emcgoverns]

elizabeth mcgovern as mary dalton (with matt dillon as jan erlone), promotional shot for “native son” (1986) | 📸: cinecom pictures