Archive - History of Black Writing Blog
The Banner image for the HBW Blog, which was published from 2011-2021.
Black Literary History Making
The HBW Blog published regularly for ten years from 2011-2021 at the URL https://projecthbw.ku.edu. During that time, it served as a major forum for the exchange of information and ideas, as well as a robust network for scholars, teachers, and students from different disciplines around the world.
Guest contributors include leading scholars and writers, but most of the posts were conceived of, researched, and written by HBW's staff of undergraduate and graduate students. Its content consists of feature editorials, book reviews, memorials, and coverage of HBW programming. Altogether, 95 writers contributed more than 750 posts.
The HBW Blog Archive is searchable by topic, month and year, and contributor name.
| Blog Post/Link | Date |
|---|---|
| Returning to Narrative Hidden neatly in the hyperbole of Thomas Sayers Ellis’ “All Their Stanzas Look Alike” (The Maverick Room. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2005. 114-115.) is a truth of sorts. There is a boring “sameness” in a substantial amount of contemporary “canonized” American poetry. Perhaps the alleged excellence of how MFA programs teach the making of poetry is partially to blame... | |
| #MayaAngelou: From Gravity Comes the Grief There is a language in silence you must use in communing with the living, the dying, and the dead. Time ordains that you deal with the gravity and brevity of manifest being... | |
| A Book for Your Library: Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems Don’t you just love that feeling of buying or receiving a book? Oh, that feeling of wanting to get home to cuddle up with it and a cup of roasted dandelion tea? Okay, just me? Last week, my professor gave me a copy of Zora Neal Hurston: A Life in Letters, and I knew that I had to pass on the favor. So, I am sharing a title in the hopes that you’ll run to your nearest bookstore or library, then home with it and a cup of tea... | |
| Poet and Author Maya Angelou Dies at Age 86 (Via ABC News) Famed poet and author Maya Angelou died this morning in North Carolina. She was 86. “She’d been very frail and had heart problems, but she was going strong, finishing a new book,” Angelou’s agent Helen Brann told ABC News. “I spoke to her yesterday. She was fine, as she always was. Her spirit was indomitable.”.. | |
| A Comprehensive Bibliography on the works of Maya Angelou browse a comprehensive bibliography of works by poet Maya Angelou. .. | |
| Henry Dumas: Visible Man/Invisible Art He was brilliant. He was troubled. He was dead at the age of 34. Like many males of his class and generation, he was a death-bound-subject, a player in the game regulated by the racial contract of the United States of America. .. | |
| Notes on Richard Rodriguez and Autobiography As a writerly act of defiance and discovery, Rodriguez published Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez in 1982. In the contexts of stereotyped machismo and socially imagined American desire, the book was a triumph of ethnic spirit. It exploited the seductiveness of American literary history. The main title was a slantwise echo of Richard Wright’s American Hunger; his subtitle, an appropriation of The Education of Henry Adams... | |
| Malcolm X Materials Digitized I would like to bring to your attention a newly published small edition, “Alex Haley’s ‘The Malcolm D. I Knew’ and Notecards from The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” Published in the peer review journal Scholarly Editing, the edition includes an unknown 29 page typed manuscript of an essay that Haley used when he was writing The Autobiography. The materials are transcribed, annotated and include high quality images that I hope will be of use to scholars. The essay and notecards provide insight into the complicated relationship between Haley and Malcolm X.. | |
| National Poetry Month Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? Black History Month in February and Women’s History Month in March inspired the Academy of American Poets to dedicate April to celebrating and increasing the awareness of poetry in the United States. .. | |
| Disney and Diversity Part II: What We Owe to Oprah What are we to do with Disneyfication? It’s here to stay. I may be succumbing to the mass media hype, but I am no longer ashamed to admit that I have hope in Oprah. .. |