Archive - History of Black Writing Blog

Autobiography is one of the more intriguing mixed genres of American writing. Elizabeth Bruss’ Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation of a Literary Genre (1976) may lead us to believe that the “rules” governing autobiography are stricter than those which pertain to drama, poetry, and fiction; awareness that generic “rules” are based on abstractions from histories of reading, however, invite us to amend them in our acts of interpretation, in the acts we commit in order to grasp the meaning of texts. We are willing to break them. We allow the writer of autobiography great latitude in arranging language and rhetorical devices in her or his effort to bear witness to “a truth, ” because we associate the truth of what happened with the individual’s confessional, psychological ego-investments. ..

In case you missed it, last week (September 27-October 3) was Banned Books Week. Put on by the American Library Association, Banned Books Week highlights books frequently challenged and banned by schools, libraries, and the media...

In NPR’s Code Switch segment, Beenish Ahmen highlighted the life and work of writer Henry Dumas. I, admittedly, haven’t read many of Dumas’s works, but he will now be added to my list of authors to read!

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Unlike Richard, contemporary readers need not be “subtle, false and treacherous” unto themselves and the worlds they inhabit. They need not pretend those worlds are either peaceful or private spaces, immune to terrors made with alacrity by other, literate human beings. The hyperbole of Reginald Martin’s title Everybody Knows What Time It Is becomes a truism in the process of daily reading, especially if what you are reading is not a political document, an analysis of skills, prowess, and trash talk in one sport or another, a scientific treatise, or an essay informed by valid evidence. That is to say, if you are reading what proclaims itself to be “literature,” you are counting privileged nanoseconds of duration. People who read “writing” count plain minutes of time. I value writing more than literature because writing is a more accurate representation (gesture) of how historical consciousness marks off trails. Writing that empowers is often excluded from lists of bestsellers. So be it.

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HBW celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month. See 26 stories that have shaped the Latino community this month, compiled by CNN.

Author Ta-Nehisi Coates is set to write Marvel’s Black Panther comic book. Women and non-whites have been severely underrepresented in comics, but Black Panther will make history as the first black superhero to headline a Marvel film. Who is Black Panther? Click here to read more.

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By the time I met my undergraduate professor Jerry W. Ward, Jr. in the mid 1990s, he had been studying Richard Wright for about 30 years. And when I met my graduate school professor William J. Harris in 1999, he had been studying Amiri Baraka for nearly 40 years. Today in 2015, in other words, Professor Ward and Professor Harris have been studying Wright and Baraka for more than 50 years.

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HBW honored poet Samuel Allen, who passed away in June. Allen’s memorial celebration is scheduled for October 10th.

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Project HBW has received news of a memorial celebration to honor poet Samuel Allen, who passed away on June 27, 2015. See official press release at bottom or click the link above.

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The world morns on the 14th anniversary of 9/11.

KU’s very own Danny Cain wrote a piece on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Spike Lee, writer and director of the 1989 film “Do the Right Thing,” will be presented with an honorary Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...

Thanks to the troublesome “magic” of instant communication which informs us about what happened prior to its spatial and temporal manifestations, we might welcome the rest and recuperation that a centennial can offer. Yet, remembering and reassessing what happened one hundred years ago can only make going from the new frying pan to an old skillet a paradoxical exercise in hopeful despair.

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