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maskedinstructor · 9 months ago

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The Adventures of David Dashiki- Stories of an African America Hero... 2024- Year of the Black Man Aaaahhh! But What To Read ?

READING...

We have agreed that reading is our starting point. Then, here are some essential and brilliant authors that you must possess in your quiver as ammunition in the battle against illiteracy. Make no mistake, this is scholastic warfare. An ill-equipped reading warrior is only armed for his own demise. Secondly, on the battlefield, we must be able to fluently communicate. We must speak the same language. One cannot speak Swahili and the other, French. This type of preparation would only lead to disaster of major proportions.

Garvey is the primer. Other authors of significant fame and reputation that our young readers must master are: Arna Bontemps, Claude Brown, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Alex Haley, Ta-Nehisi Coates, August Wilson, Malcolm X, Nelson Madela, W.E.B. DuBois, Calvin Baker, Junius Edwards, Yosef Ben-Jochannan, Harold Cruse, Maulana Karenga...

Female Authors: Alice Walker, Amanda Gorman, Toni Morrison, Chi Mammanda, Ngozi Adichie, Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, Lorraine Hansberry, Terry McMillan, Ntozake Shange, Jesmyn Ward, Angela Davis, Ida B. Wells, Claudia Tate, Dorothy Koomson, Cheryl Clarke, Sioban Brooks, Elaine Brown, Ruby Bridges, Rosa Parks, Dorothy Porter...

Poetesses: Nikki Giovani, Maya Angelou, Phyllis Wheatley, Mari Evans...

Poets: Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Countee Cullen. Jean Toomer

We must read so that we can survive the myths. We live in a country in which myths about our character and industry have been propagated for centuries. History has not told our story with veracity and pride. We have been maligned. Therefore, we use the Year 2024 to read what WE have to say about US. If we do not read, we will succumb to the vicious lies spoken and written about us. Our children will never overcome in the current social environment. What is most important is that we read our story and focus on why is it important to omit the truth about what has happened and will continue to happen to us in America. This is a land of opportunity. It is our duty to reveal the truth. This can only be accomplished if we read, act, do, speak, question, create, develop, execute, move, pursue, respond, persevere, operate, persist, exert, represent, exploit,... Damn it! We must do something. The plan is that we read. Fill the knowledge gaps. Then act. The dormant days of life have ended. We are in the moment knowledge warriors.

Here are a few questions I advance: Why is it important that America omit our true history in our textbooks?

Why has America hidden the history, of our past, our successes and achievements from all who call themselves AMERICANS?

What has been taught are lies, propaganda and MYTHS.. America is a land of opportunity. We can right these wrongs. First , we must be armed with our own stories and triumphs. We must be READERS.

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stronghours · 4 years ago

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i’m just stewing and stewing that people think this is the best they can do. these are the options? rote canon or a couple picture books and contemporary YA pickings that Penguin deigned to construct as profitable in the past five years, with a pre-constructed twitter-friendly hashtag pedagogy? and even if one is shortsighted and dull enough to think ok, there’s no more ways to teach Toni Morrison, no new insights to gain from Toni Morrison, the orchard is endless. fiction! short stories! poetry! comics! essays! politics! justice! where’s Nella Larson? where’s Jean Toomer? Richard Wright? Are you too scared of giving Native Son to high schoolers? James Baldwin? Lawson Fusao Inada? Yukio Mishima, even? why couldn’t your pedagogy now deal well with Yukio Mishima? Or bell hooks? Or Audre Lorde? have you really taught as much and as widely as you can on Zora Neale Hurston? Alice Walker? Gloria Naylor! How can you teach Bailey’s Cafe? Linden Hills is an allegory of Dante’s Inferno, you can teach them side by side! Octavia Butler? what if you actually tried to tackle work by Malcom X? Or Frantz Fanon? Sinan Antoon? Nadeem Aslam? James Weldon Johnson? Have you really, seriously, tried to probe Langston Hughes with your class? Claude McKay? Ferdinand Oyono? want to branch a little but still get that sweet Lambda Award juice if you need to explain to the parents? Jewelle Gomez! Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis! there’s literally a movie you can watch! And she’s done more! Lynda Barry, if you want to get a little weird! Deborah Miranda! there’s no beginning and no end of what you could do

#you can have romance! sci fi! speculation! vampires! allegory! comic strips! you can have it all!

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citylightsbooks · 5 years ago

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5 Questions with Megan Fernandes, Author of Good Boys

Megan Fernandes is a writer and academic living in New York City. She is the author of The Kingdom and After (Tightrope Books 2015) and the new book of poems, Good Boys (published by Tin House). Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the New Yorker, Tin House, Ploughshares, Denver Quarterly, Chicago Review, Boston Review, Rattle, Pank, the Common, Guernica, the Academy of American Poets, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, among others. She is a poetry reader for The Rumpus and an Assistant Professor of English at Lafayette College. She holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MFA in poetry from Boston University. She reads from her new book Good Boys with special guests at City Lights Bookstore on Tuesday, February 25th.

***

City Lights: If you’ve been to City Lights before, what’s your memory of the visit? If you haven’t been here before, what are you expecting?

Megan Fernandes: Of all the places I’m reading this Spring (and it’s probably not politic to say this), I am most excited to read at City Lights. I’ve never been, but I understood at a very young age that the bookstore symbolized possibility, spontaneity, digression, lostness, community, etc. As a teenager, I read a lot of Beat literature, my favorites being Dharma Bums, In the Night Café, and everything Ginsberg. I was compelled by their portraits of America’s expansiveness. And I also just think as an immigrant kid not born in the USA, the Beats gave me some sense of American geography. I went to Colorado for the first time last year and I had this memory of my first impression of Colorado as a place described in On the Road. When traveling across the country, I often have Ferlinghetti’s feverish, twitchy, carnivalesque poetics in my head. I also think in this indirect way, Beat literature shaped some of my thoughts around feminist thinking as I was conscious of my orientation as outside certain privileges of the “male, womanizing adventurer” often romanticized in Beat lit. I had to interrogate what it meant to feel intimacies with Ginsberg and Duncan who were destabilizing masculinities and cultural logics of hate.

And so what I learned from City Lights and Beat lit is really something about the relationship between myth-making and counter-culture communities. I’m understanding the truly expansive network of the movement in so much more detail right now while reading an advanced copy of a fabulous new book called The Beats: A Literary History by Steven Belletto.

What are you reading right now?

I’m reading a book called Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem, co-written by Dapper Dan himself and my good friend, Mikael Awake. It’s a history of Dapper Dan’s iconic work in fashion, of course, while being really intimate. And it’s just as much a history of his family’s internal dynamics and, through his family, New York City at large. In particular, 1970’s NYC is so vividly, brilliantly wrought in this book.

There’s this one section where Dap is at Iona College at a lecture on protohistory and the professor, a Czech immigrant, tells the class that “In order for man to have survived during those ancient times… he must have had powers that he doesn’t have now. The only people that could possibly still have these powers today are the black and brown people on the planet” and when Dap hears this, he is transfixed. He says: “This is one of the most esteemed scholars at Iona College telling a packed lecture hall that black and brown people were the only ones on the planet who still had spiritual powers. How come this was my first time hearing about that? I looked around. I was the only black student in the class. I wasn’t tired anymore. He had my full attention… I said to myself, This is what I need to know. This is how I need to formulate myself.” I’m loving how the book captures these intense moments of transformation. I love that word choice: formulate. What poetic agency is modeled in that word? I needed that word the moment I read it.

Recently, I’ve also read Samiya Bashir’s Field Theories and Edgar Kunz’s Tap Out. Samiya wrote this legitimately weird and imaginative book that feels like it’s made out of the time-space continuum. Some cosmic materiality is really showing up in that book. I remember this line: “A body. A zoo. A lovely savannah. Walls of clear, clean glass” and I’m just on a ride with the musicality of her shifting assonance. Plus, I know that writers like June Jordan and Toni Cade Bambara are operating influences/specters of the book and you can feel that energy. Edgar’s book is more narrative and quieter, but so devastating. I sort of get what makes his speakers tenderize if that makes sense. I think it’s the same phenomena that tenderizes me, too.

Some of my favorite novels of recent years includes A Questionable Shape by Bennett Sims, The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch, Sonora by Hannah Lillith Assadi, and very recently, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead.

What book or writer do you always find yourself recommending?

I think Jean Toomer’s Cane is the most beautiful book of the 20th century. I remember just being blown away by its call and response, the repeating imagery of sun and smoke and pines. That book is so stunning. Other astounding work that I always recommend includes Mebvh McGuckian’s Captain Lavender, Anne Carson’s The Autobiography of Red, Evie Shockley’s The New Black, Franz Wright’s Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, Eleni Sikelianos’ Body Clock, Jorie Graham’s The Errancy, Bhanu Kapil’s The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, and Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann’s translations of Rilke. Those are my hard-hitters. Those books are why I became a poet.

What writers/artists/people do you find the most influential to the writing of this book and/or your writing in general?

You know, I collected poems while I was writing and editing this book. And I think those specific poems created a kind of constellation around me, almost protective, that kept me writing. Some of those poems include “The Long Recovery” by Ellen Bass, “A Matter of Balance,” by Evie Shockley, “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, “I am Not Seaworthy” by Toni Morrison, “Becoming Regardless” by Jack Spicer, “A New Bride Almost Visible in Latin” by Jack Gilbert, “To the Young Who Want to Die” by Gwendolyn Brooks and many, many others. Definitely O’Hara as well. He never leaves me. The most important poem of that little self-curated archive is Frank Bidart’s “Visions at 74” where he writes: “To love existence / is to love what is indifferent to you.” I remember reading that line and just losing it. I have been guided by so much of Bidart. And maybe my book is a little bit about how to sustain rage in the face of that which is indifferent to you, what cannot love you (both personally and abstractly). How do you sustain rage so as to not fall into despair?

I also listened to a variety of music while writing and editing. A mix between contemporary sad kid hip-hop, old school jazz and blues, gospel, 80’s bands, pop culture queens, 1970’s hypnotic modal vamp, classical Spanish guitar, electronic pop, really pretty varied. A few names that come to mind: KOTA the Friend, NoName, Vince Staples, Travis Scott, Miles Davis Quintet, Bessie Smith, Sam Cooke, The Knocks, Solange, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, Big Mama Thornton, Miriam Makeba, Kamasi Washington, Thompson Twins, Misfits, Bowie, Talking Heads, Tears for Fears, Cher, Whitney Houston, Portishead, Goldfrapp, Memphis Slim, Dinah Washington, Alberto Iglesias, Gustavo Santaolalla, Holychild, Blood Orange, etc.

If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?

My grandpa played violin on a ship that sailed between Tanga, Tanzania and Goa, India. I never had the chance to meet him. He died when my dad was sixteen, but I always thought about what that journey might have looked and felt like, its many hardships, but also the wonder of gazing out at the sea playing strings. For that reason, I’d love to open a bookstore that focused specifically on Indian Ocean diaspora and sold books exclusively by authors working, uncovering, or investigating the literature of that oceanic rim. I think there is something rich in thinking about books not necessarily focused on nation-statehood but thinking more about a kind of social-imaginary with a literature that is messy in its conceptualization and crosses, migrates, misses, and mythologizes across many cultures over generations. You could have sections on food, underwater exploration, piracy, long-distance intimacy, trade routes, empire, transnational feminism. I like the idea of a bookstore that is anti-genre and instead, organized by associative thinking and imagination. It would be a logistical nightmare. You would never find what you were looking for, but you might find something you didn’t know existed.

So yes, I’d vote for a little homegrown network of bookstores in India, East Africa, and actually, maybe one of them in Lisbon which is a city that has a long (and problematic) history with the Indian Ocean. I’ve spent a lot of time in Lisbon the past eight years of my life, spending time visiting family and researching the history of the Portuguese empire especially as it relates to my family history (my folks are third generation East African Portuguese colonized Indians). I have a lot of conflicting homelands which is a way of saying that there are times when I feel like I have nothing but a rootless present. That’s something I investigate in my work, that weird (a)temporality. And I’m drawn to the particular light of Lisbon which is quite unusual. I’d call the bookstore “Malaika” which means “Angel” in Swahili and is the favorite folk song of my parents who grew up in Tanzania. I like the idea of a bookstore in Lisbon with the name in Swahili run by a Goan-Canadian-American woman. That’s the world I grew up in… one of multiplicities.

#Megan Fernandas #City Lights Bookstore #Tin House Books #Good Boys

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blackkudos · 5 years ago

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Sterling A. Brown

Sterling Allen Brown (May 1, 1901 – January 13, 1989) was a black professor, folklorist, poet, literary critic, and first Poet Laureate of the District of Columbia. He chiefly studied black culture of the Southern United States and was a full professor at Howard University for most of his career. He was a visiting professor at several other notable institutions, including Vassar College, New York University (NYU), Atlanta University, and Yale University.

Early life and education

Brown was born on the campus of Howard University in Washington D.C., where his father, Sterling N. Brown, a former slave, was a prominent minister and professor at Howard University Divinity School. His mother Grace Adelaide Brown, who had been the valedictorian of her class at Fisk University, taught in D.C. public schools for more than 50 years. Both his parents grew up in Tennessee and often shared stories with Brown, their only child, who heard his father's stories about famous leaders such as Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.

Brown's early childhood was spent on a farm on Whiskey Bottom Road in Howard County, Maryland. He was educated at Waterford Oaks Elementary and Dunbar High School, where he graduated as the top student. He received a scholarship to attend Williams College in Massachusetts. Graduating from Williams Phi Beta Kappa in 1922, he continued his studies at Harvard University, receiving an MA a year later.That same year of 1923, he was hired as an English lecturer at Virginia Theological Seminary and College in Lynchburg, Virginia, a position he would hold for the next three years. He never pursued a doctorate degree, but several colleges he attended gave him honorary doctorates. Brown won "the Graves Prize for his essay 'The Comic Spirit in Shakespeare and Moliere'" in his time at Williams College.

Marriage and family

Brown married Daisy Turnbull in 1927 and they went on to adopt a son together. Daisy was an occasional muse for Brown: his poems "Long Track Blues" and "Against That Day" were inspired by her.

Married for over 50 years, the second poem in Alfred Edward Housman's A Shropshire Lad was meaningful to the couple. Brown read the poem to Daisy on their wedding day and she read it to him fifty years later on their anniversary. They had one son, John L. Dennis.

Academic career

Brown began his teaching career with positions at several universities, including Lincoln University and Fisk University, before returning to Howard in 1929. He was a professor there for 40 years. Brown's poetry used the south for its setting and showed slave experiences of the African American people. Brown often imitated southern African-American speech, using "variant spellings and apostrophes to mark dropped consonants". He taught and wrote about African-American literature and folklore. He was a pioneer in the appreciation of this genre. He had an "active, imaginative mind" when writing and "a natural gift for dialogue, description and narration".

Brown was known for introducing his students to concepts then popular in jazz, which along with blues, spirituals and other forms of black music formed an integral component of his poetry.

In addition to his career at Howard University, Brown served as a visiting professor at Vassar College, New York University (NYU), Atlanta University, and Yale University.

Some of his notable students include Toni Morrison, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Sowell, Ossie Davis, and Amiri Baraka (aka LeRoi Jones).

In 1969 Brown retired from his faculty position at Howard and turned full-time to poetry.

Literary career

In 1932 Brown published his first book of poetry Southern Road. It was a collection of poems, many with rural themes and treated the simple lives of poor, black, country folk with extra poignancy and dignity. Brown's work included pieces authentic dialect and structures as well as formal work. Despite the success of this book, he struggled to find a publisher for the followup, No Hiding Place. Sterling Brown was most known for his authentic southern black dialect.

His poetic work was influenced in content, form and cadence by African-American music, including work songs, blues and jazz. Like that of Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and other black writers of the period, his work often dealt with race and class in the United States. He was deeply interested in a folk-based culture, which he considered most authentic. Brown is considered part of the Harlem Renaissance artistic tradition, although he spent the majority of his life in the Brookland neighborhood of Northeast Washington, D.C.

Quotes

"Harvard has ruined more niggers than bad liquor."

Brown's warning to Thomas Sowell, as quoted in Sowell's A Personal Odyssey (2000).

Honors

In 1979, the District of Columbia declared May 1, his birthday, Sterling A. Brown Day.

His Collected Poems won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in the early 1980s for the best collection of poetry published that year.

In 1984 the District of Columbia named him its first poet laureate, a position he held until his death from leukemia at the age of 88.

The Friends of Libraries USA in 1997 named Founders Hall at Howard University a Literary Landmark, the first so designated in Washington, DC.

The home where Brown resided is located in the Brookland section of Northeast Washington, DC. An engraved plaque and a sign created by the DC Commission On Arts And Humanities are featured in front of the house.

Works

Southern Road, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932 (original poetry)

Negro Poetry (literary criticism)

The Negro in American Fiction, Bronze booklet - no. 6 (1937), published by The Associates in Negro Folk Education (Washington, D.C.)

Negro Poetry and Drama: and the Negro in American fiction, Atheneum, 1972 (criticism)

The Negro Caravan, 1941, co-editor with Arthur P. Davis and Ulysses Lee (anthology of African-American literature)

The Last Ride of Wild Bill (poetry)

Michael S. Harper, ed. (1996). The Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown. Northwestern University Press. ISBN 978-0-8101-5045-4. (1st edition 1980)

The Poetry of Sterling Brown, recorded 1946-1973, released on Smithsonian Folkways, 1995

Mark A. Sanders, ed. (1996). A son's return: selected essays of Sterling A. Brown. UPNE. ISBN 978-1-55553-275-8.

Old Lem (Poem)

Old Len was put to music by Carla Olson with the permission of Sterling Brown’s estate. The resulting song is called Justice and was recorded by Carla backed by former member of The Rolling Stones Mick Taylor and former member of the Faces Ian McLagan along Jesse Sublett on bass and Rick Hemmert on drums.

#05/01 #01/13

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watchingthesuperbowl · 7 years ago

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Notes taken during Super Bowl XXXV

PREGAME

This is a CBS broadcast.

Seems to be an extremely pro-Giants crowd. Where's this game being played? Looks like...Tampa? Yep, Tampa. I don't know whether it's NFC loyalty, or that half of Florida was born in New York.

Coin toss: Winning head coaches and MVPs from previous Super Bowls in Tampa. Tom Flores, Bill Parcells, Marcus Allen, Ottis Anderson.

Flores will toss the coin. Giants win the toss and will receive.

FIRST QUARTER

Decent enough kickoff return, out to the 21.

Phil Simms: Kerry Collins is extremely relaxed and confident despite facing this dominant Baltimore defense.

Goose looks ridiculous.

First play isn't a play at all. Encroachment on the defense. First and 5 now.

First real play is an incomplete pass. Collins fires it to his tight end, it bounces off the receiver into the air, and it's nearly picked.

Giants go three and out. Incomplete, run for zero yards, incomplete.

Trent Dilfer quarterbacked this Ravens team to 10 straight wins? Goodness, that must've been a hell of a defense.

Anyway, the Ravens take over on their own 37.

Jason Sehorn looks like he’s 12.

Ravens three and out. Dilfer looking like Dilfer.

Giants three and out again. They punt on fourth and 8.

Simms: "We can expect a lot of three-and-outs today." Great. Stay tuned.

2nd and 11, Trent Dilfer badly misses a WIDE open Jamal Lewis on a swing pass because Trent Dilfer. Lewis might still be running if he had caught that ball.

Ravens go three and out. Again. Dilfer just misses Patrick Johnson in the end zone.

First down, Kerry Collins throws into traffic at his own three yard line, which...hey, man, good luck with that. He got lucky, it was only incomplete.

And we have a first down! Collins rolls right and hits Ike Hilliard coming across the field.

Giants punt, the fifth punt in the first eight minutes and change of the game. Great return from Jermaine Lewis to the Giants' 22. There's flag on the play. Holding on the return team. It's coming back. Ravens start at the Giants' 41.

Finally, we have some offense. Trent Dilfer throws deep down the seam to Brandon Stokley. Perfect throw hits him in stride. Touchdown. 7-0 Baltimore.

Simms: The Giants blew coverage on that play - could tell by DB Jason Sehorn's reaction after the score.

CBS graphic: This is the first time the Giants have trailed all postseason.

Oh, hey, it's another three and out. Giants will punt again. They've done absolutely nothing offensively today.

Punt returner Jermaine Lewis drops the ball. Hit him right in the hands. It rolls 10-12 yards backwards, but the Ravens recover.

Goodness. Dilfer misses another open receiver, this time on third down. Simms: "I was going to say Trent Dilfer is really throwing the football very well down here so far in this game, but that time, Brandon Stokley...wide open, nobody has him, and Trent Dilfer waits too long to deliver the football."

Dilfer is now 2-for-7, which makes him the most successful offensive player in this game.

Ravens to punt again. Nice return from Ike Hilliard, out near the Giants' 40. O.J. Brigance on the tackle. Brigance was a heck of a player in the CFL.

First down, Collins takes a shot downfield, but barely misses an open Ike Hilliard.

Oh, hey, it's another three and out. Giants will punt again. Again. Again and again. This is Brad Maynard's fifth punt IN THE FIRST QUARTER.

First down, Dilfer goes deep to a wide open Patrick Johnson. And misses. Because Trent Dilfer. Johnson was so open he could have crawled into the end zone.

Third down, Dilfer misses an open receiver. Because Trent Dilfer. Three and out.

First quarter thankfully ends as the Giants look close to punting for the sixth time. 7-0 Ravens.

SECOND QUARTER

Yep, here comes punt number six. The Giants go three and out for the fifth time in the first half. One first down, five threes-and-out, six punts.

Sideline reporter Bonnie Bernstein: Collins is very calm, not rattled at all with the dominance of the Baltimore defense.

Holy crap, someone got a first down. Dilfer to Johnson for eight yards on 3rd and 7. There were two total first downs in the first quarter - now there have been 3 in the game.

Yeah, well, that burst of offense didn't last long. Michael Strahan sacks Dilfer on third and long. Baltimore will punt. Again.

Next possession, New York gets two first downs via defensive penalties. They're moving downfield simply on the basis of these penalties. Baltimore has committed 5 penalties already today.

Giants run a double-reverse flea flicker, which seems a bit insane against a defense with this kind of speed. Incomplete pass.

Next play, Collins throws a pick. Ray Lewis tips it, Jamie Sharper grabs it. Ravens ball. I guess the good news is that the Giants didn't punt this time?

First play of the ensuing Ravens drive, Trent Dilfer throws it directly to linebacker Jessie Armstead, who goes unchallenged for a pick six. What an awful throw. There's a flag on the play, let's see what it is.

Defensive holding. The touchdown is wiped away. That was a mindblowingly bad throw and Dilfer was lucky there was a penalty. I can't even fathom what the heck that throw was. Words can't do it justice.

The Ravens will punt after a couple incomplete passes. Simms says if the Giants keep hitting Dilfer on every throw, he'll make a mistake. I say he'll make them anyway.

Giants gain 20 on a pass from Collins to Toomer. Their offense hasn't done much, but you can see they have the ability to move downfield. Collins has been okay when he has time to throw. Which is almost never.

Another first down for New York. Quick slant, Collins to Hilliard, down to the Baltimore 45. This is the Giants' first trip into Baltimore territory.

Giants yards on this drive: 47. Yards in every other Giants drive combined: 28.

The drive stalls after a second down sack. They'll punt from the Baltimore 42. This is Maynard's seventh punt of the half.

Third down on the Ravens' next drive, Dilfer goes deep down the sideline to Qadry Ismail. 44 yards. Simms can't understand why the Giants' defense is taking chances and not just forcing Dilfer to complete a bunch of short passes to move downfield. The implication is that Dilfer isn't very good, which...yeah, absolutely. I had the same thought.

Dilfer: 6-16, 102 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT.

There's a fight on the sideline after a third down play. Greg Gumbel doesn't think anyone threw any punches, that it was just a "loud disagreement".

Ravens will attempt a 47 yard field goal, a distance which I don't particularly care for in Tampa-based Super Bowls. He got it. 10-0 Baltimore. I don't want to talk about it. I'm salty.

Giants putting together a nice two-minute drive as halftime approaches. A heck of a draw play to Tiki Barber gets inside the Baltimore 30.

And...one play later, Collins forces a throw into double coverage. He threw it up for grabs and he got picked off. The only way that's not an interception is if the Baltimore defenders unintentionally knock it away from each other.

CBS graphic: Giants have trailed at the half of both of their previous Super Bowls. They're 2-0 in those games.

First half thankfully comes to a close. 10-0 Baltimore. That was some dull, uninteresting football.

THIRD QUARTER

Ravens receive opening kickoff. Great return from Lewis, out to the Baltimore 46. It's coming back, though. Holding, receiving team, on the runback.

Baltimore doesn't do much with the ball, and Michael Strahan and Cornelius Griffin converge on quarterback Trent Dilfer on third and long. It's a sack and the Ravens will punt. Again.

Sideline reporter Armen Keteyian: Dilfer's hand seems to have been injured on the sack, they're icing it, taking him to the locker room, and Tony Banks is warming up to replace him.

Dilfer walks to the locker room, messing with his left hand, trying to figure out what's up.

Simms: I don't mean to sound callous, but that's his left hand. He can still throw with his right hand.

Gumbel: They'll x-ray Dilfer's left pinky.

First down, Baltimore defensive lineman Michael McCrary is doubleteamed, falls over, and just crawls over to Kerry Collins to sack him. Next play, 2nd and 18, Collins is a bit off target and finds defensive back Kim Herring instead of receiver Ike Hilliard. Baltimore takes over in New York territory.

Tony Banks is in at quarterback for the Ravens. This is good for Baltimore because he isn't Trent Dilfer.

Ravens gain a few yards and set up an easier field goal attempt for Matt Stover. Nope. Wide left.

Keteyian: It's Dilfer's left ring and pinky fingers. Doesn't seem to be as serious as it looks.

Second down, Collins goes downfield to Hilliard, who's immediately hit. There's discussion - is this a fumble? It is not. It's an incomplete pass. Giants go three and out. Sixth time tonight.

This Giants punt is the 15th total punt of the game, tying the all-time Super Bowl record. And it's still the third quarter.

Dilfer back in the game as the Ravens take over. And...he misses an open Shannon Sharpe deep down the middle. Yep, Dilfer's fine. Simms describes it as a perfect throw, which...really, Phil?

Simms: When you have a lead like the Ravens have, the long pass is the safest pass. You run into trouble throwing underneath and short. When you throw it deep, it's harder to intercept.

Ravens go three and out. You like punts? You're in the right place. Here comes the 16th punt of the day. AND IT'S STILL THE THIRD QUARTER

First play of the Giants' drive, Kerry Collins throws a slant and cornerback Duane Starks knows what's coming. He jumps the route and is GONE. Touchdown. 17-0 Baltimore.

Collins has thrown four interceptions, tied for the single game Super Bowl record.

Well, it's not going to be a shutout. The Giants' Ron Dixon takes the ensuing kickoff 97 yards. Dixon takes it to the house. They're still sort of alive. 17-7 Baltimore, late in the third quarter.

Gumbel: We have seen two touchdowns in 18 seconds. These 18 seconds have been higher scoring than the previous 40+ minutes.

Giants kick off to Jermaine Lewis and...he's gone too. Lewis down the sideline. He answers a kickoff return touchdown with a kickoff return touchdown. This is bananas. Back to back kickoff return TDs. 24-7 Baltimore with 3:13 left in the third quarter. An 84 yard kickoff return touchdown from Lewis.

There have been 3 touchdowns in the past 36 seconds.

There won't be three touchdown returns in a row. Ron Dixon only gets out to his 25.

2nd and 11, Collins over the middle. Very nearly picked off by Ray Lewis. It'll be third and 11. Incomplete pass. Another three and out.

Third quarter ends as the Ravens have the ball near midfield. 24-7.

FOURTH QUARTER

First play of the quarter, they run a Wildcat play. Jermaine Lewis takes a shotgun snap, Trent Dilfer lines up as a wide receiver. It doesn't work. Simms acts as if it's the dumbest thing he's ever seen. Ravens will punt.

Giants start inside their own 15 for the fifth time today.

Collins sacked in his end zone, the ball goes flying out, and the Giants recover in the field of play. Could easily have been a Ravens touchdown or a safety. The sack was by McCrary, who's now playing with a broken hand. New York goes...you guessed it, three and out. They'll punt from their own end zone.

The punt takes a goofy bounce and somehow misses a Raven who's fallen over. Giants pounce on it thinking they get possession. they do not. First and 10 Ravens at the New York 38.

Ravens throwing downfield. Dilfer to Ben Coates down the seam for 17 yards. First down at the Giants 21.

Baltimore feeding Jamal Lewis now. Giants can't really stop him. First and goal inside the 5.

Next play, pitch left, Lewis barely gets to the pylon for a touchdown. The Giants challenge the call, saying he fumbled before he got to the end zone. We'll see. Replay seems to show Lewis got to the line...barely. The call stands, touchdown. 31-7 Baltimore. That's the first rushing touchdown by a rookie in the Super Bowl in 13 years. Doing the math, than means....Timmy Smith! Super Bowl XXII.

Dixon fumbles on the ensuing kickoff return. He's popped and it comes loose. Ravens recover. 8:29 on the clock, I'd assume we're about to see a bunch of Jamal Lewis.

We do. Lewis goes over 100 yards as the clock goes under 7:00.

Simms: Who would you vote for as the MVP? Gumbel: Dilfer. Me: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PEOPLE WATCHING?!?

Ravens drive stalls and they kick a field goal with 5:28 left. 34-7.

Gumbel begins to say nice stuff about Ray Lewis, that Lewis says he was prosecuted because he's famous. I say he was prosecuted because he destroyed evidence pertinent to a murder investigation. Gumbel says at some point, Lewis will contact the families of the victims. I'd tell him to go F himself if I were one a member of one of those families.

Simms: Giants have ten yards of offense in the second half. Ten. They've gone three and out again and will punt again.

Banks in at QB again for Baltimore, replacing "MVP" Trent Dilfer.

Cutaway. Art Modell. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

We reach the two-minute warning. Ravens punt. Everyone's just going through the motions.

Simms: At least the Giants can't say they deserved to win. It won't hurt as badly.

Collins nearly picked off again. Tipped ball over the middle.

Gumbel: Ravens coach Brian Billick and Giants coach Jim Fassel are close friends.

Ray Lewis is named the MVP, which is entirely reasonable.

Clock runs out as the Giants halfheartedly try to move downfield. Final score: Baltimore 34, New York 7. That game was hot garbage.

#nfl #football #super bowl #super bowl xxxv #baltimore #new york #ravens #giants #baltimore ravens #new york giants #art modell can kiss my patoot

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yasbxxgie · 5 years ago

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The Black Book

My favorite writer of all time is Toni Morrison, which prematurely reveals much about where I stand on the major issues of modern black literature. When literary tastemaker Oprah Winfrey canonized Morrison’s Paradise in her book club years ago, I was intensely dismayed by the readers’ televised difficulty with the text. I shook my head with elitist disdain at the dumbing down of America. When it comes to black writers of the Now, I snobbishly fall out on the side of Edwidge Danticat, Colson Whitehead, and Zadie Smith rather than the intentionally less challenging, more populist E. Lynn Harris (the largest-selling black male author ever? How the fuck did that happen?), Omar Tyree, and Eric Jerome Dickey. However, success stories on both sides of my aristocratic dividing line have led to the book industry publishing more work from African American authors than ever before, as well as the recent establishment of several black-targeted imprints by major publishers.

Emblematic of the current attention raining down on African American letters, the black literary world came together at two separate events a few weekends ago: the second annual Black Writers’ Retreat, held at the Betty Shabazz Wholistic Retreat Center in upstate New York, and the third annual Harlem Book Fair and Uptown Arts Festival on 135th Street. The Black Writers’ Retreat, founded by Third World Press publisher Haki R. Madhubuti, hosted 70 writers at varied stages of their craft, honing skills in workshops led by Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, and others over a four-day weekend. The Harlem Book Fair featured panel discussions with writers like Nelson George and Colin Channer, as well as readings and expo-style booths. But the conversations and issues raised at both events were similar: Whom do black authors write for, and who should our audience be? Will the imprints of the major houses—newly geared up to reach a broad black readership—release mediocre work and ghettoize the literary marketplace, or will they prove a boon for black voices?

DAY ONE OF THE BLACK WRITERS’ RETREAT: Otisville, New York. Sixty women and 10 men—an assortment of writers from all over the country, both seasoned and aspiring—sit assembled in the ranch house conference center, surrounded by five acres of plush green land, at this opening session of the retreat. As per tradition, the eldest writer present is asked permission to commence an African libation ceremony, honoring the spirits of inspirational writers past as well as ancestors on the whole. Water is spilled; names are called out from every corner of the rambler. Zora Neale Hurston. James Baldwin. Jean Toomer. Ralph Ellison. Gwendolyn Brooks. Richard Wright. A prayer is sent up for poet June Jordan, suffering from breast cancer. The ritual is intended to place writers in a higher, literary mindset rather than focusing on the capitalistic angle (i.e., what it takes to sell a book).

“You have major publishers which are primarily owned by multinational corporations starting black imprints,” Madhubuti says in his opening address, referring to specialized presses like Strivers Row, Amistad, Harlem Moon, and Dafina Books (which are part of Villard/Random House, HarperCollins, Random House, and Kensington, respectively). “I think there are about seven now. And these publishing companies have brought in black editors and put some serious money around trying to capture that market. So when you begin to look at what they’re doing and the type of material that they’re publishing, there does seem to be some promise in terms of at least having the resources to publish writers in many different genres.”

Though black fiction stands at a promising juncture—writers are being granted the previously unavailable opportunity to realize mainstream potential, offering readers access to a wider variety of talent—the nationalistic faction of the black literati has cause to remain wary of “multinational corporations.” (Madhubuti’s own Third World Press, founded in 1967, is a political and cultural house publishing in many genres—fiction, nonfiction, spiritual—and has provided an inspirational model for the likes of Moore Black Press, Black Classic Press, Africa World Press, and Just Us Press.) Strivers Row has already kicked up a bit of controversy; ads for three new titles—placed in mags like Good Housekeeping and Family Circle—are sponsored by and double as a plug for Pine-Sol cleaner, sparking fears that these imprints will further ghettoize black fiction. A recent article in The New York Times cited contemptuous comments from authors Terry McMillan (“What does Pine-Sol have to do with books? It is really insulting. It is sad. Once again we are back where we started”) and Jill Nelson (“These ads are insulting and condescending. It’s racist, and I bet you it’s bad marketing”).

“Every other form of popular culture in this country uses some form of underwriting,” counters Nelson George, veteran music journalist and author of contemporary relationship novels like Seduced and One Woman Short. “Cross-marketing is the norm in TV, film, music. So why would books be sacrosanct? I think it’s inevitable. The next John Grisham novel may be sponsored by Lexus, and definitely I know Tom Clancy would get a big deal! The U.S. Army would be happy to underwrite his shit. It’s fascinating. All the controversy is about a black title, but the effect of this deal will affect the entire publishing industry, if it works.”

Contrary arguments notwithstanding, it still seems unlikely that a title by a new black author—Rails Under My Back, by Jeffery Renard Allen, for example—will be taken as seriously when used to hawk household cleanser. Literary agent Anna Ghosh detects an implicit differentiation between populist fiction and literary fiction where these imprints are concerned. “I think the way some of these imprints are publishing popular African American fiction is kind of like how they think about genre fiction—and literary fiction is always different: Each book is unique,” she says. “But I think an incredible number of new novels are being published every year, and many of them disappear without anybody taking any note at all. In some ways, African American writers have an advantage because they’ll stand out. It’s not yet another novel set in rural Iowa about whatever, so they can get a certain kind of attention, and there’s an audience that will find it.” This audience is confirmed by a glance at the bestseller list: E. Lynn Harris’s Anyway the Wind Blows is at No. 2, Lalita Tamedy’s Cane River‘s at No. 3, Alice Randall’s controversial The Wind Done Gone is at No. 9, and Eric Jerome Dickey’s Between Lovers is at No. 16.

DAY TWO, 1:30 P.M.: Radiant, almond-complected poet Sonia Sanchez jokes amiably with her old friend, the notoriously cantankerous author Imamu Amiri Baraka, both resilient elders of the 1960s Black Arts Movement. During the third session of the day, Sister Sanchez teases Brother Baraka about his conservative “buddies,” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and conservative critic Stanley Crouch, before pontificating on the state of black literature. Amid factionalism about highbrow literature versus populist, Terry McMillan trickle-down writing, Sister Sanchez takes a wider view. “Black literature is alive, and it’s singing, my brother. It depends on what song you want to hear, OK? There’s a song of tradition, there’s a song of what I call great writing, there’s a song of fun, there’s a song of romance and adventure. I’d say, support ’em all. And don’t take an attitude, but know that you must always support that song that says great tradition, great history, great herstory, great literature. There’s enough room for all kinds of literature to advance and be listened to, and be bought and read.”

DAY THREE, NOON: After a night of jovial bedlam, filled with African storytelling from the elders (tales of director Bill Duke’s hoodlum screenplay, Brother Baraka’s near-confrontation with Ralph Ellison over a book critique), every last one worth the retreat’s $450 registration fee, tensions begin to surface during a fiction-workshop session on Saturday, the last full day of the retreat. One or two of the more seasoned writers grow frustrated, as more basic advice is disseminated to the novices, cutting into time intended to demonstrate and apply techniques. Baraka heads a session that leads into lunchtime, discussing the mainstream-versus-literary-fiction issue with a more nationalistic perspective.

“They wanna push a literature and an art that’s noncontentious, that’s actually a soporific—that puts you to sleep, that makes you content with things rather than trying to find out how to transform them,” he says. “That’s something that’s been proposed by the people who rule this society. They don’t want you to think. If you start thinking, you would know that they need a better society than this one.”

Walking across the grassy expanse to the dining room, the bespectacled Baraka expounds further. “The whole intellectual life of America is suffocating. Now that the big publishers, such as there are remaining in the United States, found that black people can read, they’re publishing a whole mountain-load of essentially mediocre, useless kind of materials. I think it just goes back to the need for black and progressive writers to begin to create their own kinds of journals. Black people live in 27 different cities in this country: How do we produce the kind of journals where we can publish a maximum of people, have a maximum discussion, and get a maximum of new writers emerging? Until we begin to publish our own journals that are independent from big money, do our own publishing independent of big money, we are always gonna be stifled in terms of our development.”

More harmony exists on the subject of the black-targeted imprints sprouting from the major publishers: They ain’t likely to last in the long run. “Many of these black authors, writers who are being published today, they’re not going to be around long,” Madhubuti declares on the last day of his retreat. “You read the books and you’re not led to much of anything. At some point, it becomes the same ol’ same ol’. Now obviously, there’s gonna be junk in everything. But it’s not my responsibility to put the junk out. That’s not gonna happen at Third World Press. I think that with these seven imprints, they’re going to erase each other. If you go the next five years, we won’t be having this conversation because they won’t exist.”

Nelson George agrees in essence. “I’m sure there’ll be fallout. There’s fallout in every genre: hip-hop labels go, dotcom companies go. Not all of these things will make it. But all you need is one or two good editors to find one or two flagship artists. The opportunities that are being created by these imprints are unprecedented. If the imprints all are closed down in five years and they’ve spawned three good writers who’ll have a constituency and continue going on, then they’ll have served their purpose.”

Photograph:

The growing popularity of black books is evident on bestseller lists and at the 2001 Harlem Book Fair

#2001 #black author #black authors #black literature #black lit #lit #literature #books #the village voice #nelson george #sonia sanchez #toni morrison #harlem #harlem book fair #new york city

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javiermoor4680-blog · 6 years ago

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Is Kansas City Ready For A Disaster?

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