Archive - History of Black Writing Blog
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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 |
|---|---|
| Unghosting African American Literature Unghosting, as the word is used in the title of Frank X. Walker’s recent collection of poems, Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers (2013), might refer to connotations of “recovery” in the work of criticism and literary history. Aware that “recovery” is a subjective action, we can strengthen our work by exploiting that subjectivity more than we normally do... | |
| Centennial 2014 Dudley Randall (1914-2000), Daisy Bates (1914-1999), Kenneth Bancroft Clark (1914-2005), Billy Eckstine [William Clarence Eckstine 1914-1993] Ralph Ellison (1914-1994), Joe Lewis [Joseph Louis Barrow 1914-1981], Sun Ra [Herman Poole Blount 1914-1993], Woody Strode [Woodrow Wilson Woodwine Strode 1914-1994], Sonny Boy Williamson I [John Lee Curtis Williamson 1914-1948], and Emmett Ashford (1914-1980) are all candidates for centennial celebration. .. | |
| Reflections on a NEH Institute: Cornelia Walker Bailey and Sapelo Island Cornelia Walker Bailey is Sapelo Island. She is a descendant of Bilali, of whom she writes in her memoir that “If you had been standing on the white sands of this island at day clean in 1803, or a little later, you might have seen a tall, dark-skinned man with narrow features, his head covered with a cap resembling a Turkish fez, unfold his prayer mat kneel and pray to the east while the sun rose. This was Bilali, the most famous and powerful of all the Africans who lived on this island during slavery days, and the first of my ancestors I can name.” Cornelia is the Island’s griot,community leader, writer-in-residence, tour guide, political activist, and historian. She wears many hats. .. | |
| Reflections on an NEH Summer Institute The history of black writing has taken many twists and turns over the last few centuries; but never have I encountered a more complex, exciting, and perplexing example of it as I did last summer... | |
| Angela Jackson: The Novel as Luminous Web It is not uncommon for writers to use many genres to provoke thought about historical time. It is unusual, however, to consider that the interplay of genres shapes our larger visions of time and life. .. | |
| June Jordan: The Critic as Activist To be a minority in America, or in any “democratic state” is a dicey proposition... | |
| LeRoi Jones/ 1963 It seems to be an innocent use of time when we celebrate memory at intervals of fifty years. The ghosts of things past, however, can become rowdy. Things can get out of hand. .. | |
| Future Revolution in Critical Talk Lu Xun (Zhou Shuren 1881-1936), one of modern China’s most important writers, understood the danger of premature celebrations. “The first thing is not to become intoxicated by victory,” he wrote in an essay on success in Nanjing and Shanghai,” and not to boast; the second thing is to consolidate the victory; the third is to give the enemy the finishing stroke, for he has been beaten, but is by no means crushed.” .. | |
| Nina Simone and the Blues Tradition When Nina Simone heard about the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, she was listening to the radio at home... | |
| Albert Murray: The Temperature of Death |