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 |
|---|---|
| In Memoriam: Ernest J. Gaines The Project on the History of Black Writing mourns the passing of Ernest J. Gaines. Gaines died from cardiac arrest in his Louisiana home on Tuesday. He was 86. Gaines was born the eldest son of sharecroppers and raised on a plantation in Pointe Coupée Parish, Louisiana. The rural South would become a permanent fixture in his writing because it was not only home in the physical sense, but it was the home that nurtured Gaines in Black oral traditions and laid the foundation for his own storytelling to come to life. It was his loyalty to telling tales of Black life in the South that set him apart from his literary contemporaries and cultivated his legacy. .. | |
| LGBT History Month: Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin In honor of LGBT History Month, the HBW Blog is featuring posts on foundational queer texts by African American authors. Today, we discuss James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (1956). .. | |
| Kiese Laymon on the Power of Revision and Description On October 3rd KU welcomed critically-acclaimed author Kiese Laymon to the Lied Center to deliver the 2019 Common Book Lecture... | |
| We Do Language: Nikki Giovanni A 2019 Legacy Seminar Encounter The Furious Flower Poetry Center has held biennial summer legacy seminars since 2009 (with a hiatus in 2013 and 2015), a focused opportunity to study the work of a living poet... | |
| A Dying Democracy We live in paradox. It is a “truth,” universally recognized and universally denied in contemporary American society, that democracy is dying. Recognition that this “truth” is not a “false-truth” can be enhanced by reading Lynch’s book in tandem with Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students ( New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987) in order to behold what prism refracts conservative and liberal ideologies simultaneously. .. | |
| Toni Morrison Remembered In 1985-1986, I had the great fortune of winning an NEH Fellowship for Individual Study and Research. At the time, I was teaching at the University of Kentucky, with Zora Neale Hurston scholar Bob Hemenway, Callaloo editor Charles Rowell, and the ineffable scholar-teacher Sandra Y. Govan. It was an uplifting, timely gift, rescuing me from several life changes that had morphed into life challenges. The purpose of the fellowship was to research and write a study on a now arcane idea about Sterling A. Brown—his professed belief in critical realism. With encouragement, I applied for a position at Yale as a Research Fellow. The eminent scholar Robert Stepto agreed to be my faculty sponsor. Armed with my NEH, I took off for New Haven for what would prove to be a series of magnificent experiences... | |
| A Day on the Mississippi Writers Trail Margaret Walker (1915-1998) would have turned 104 this past July 7, 2019. The poet, novelist, educator and cultural critic was part of a distinct tradition of writing that is too easily forgotten. A tradition of truth-telling that makes us see and understand ourselves and our relationship to others differently. Walker’s history may not be as well known to some, but she was a “national treasure,” as former Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, William R. Ferris, once told an audience... | |
| Remembering Paule Marshall Rest in peace, Ms. Marshall. You will be sorely missed, but we will continue to share your words and art... | |
| In Memoriam: Toni Morrison The Project on the History of Black Writing mourns the death of the incomparable Toni Morrison. A literary icon and our friend, we have long admired her brilliance, literary genius, and love of our culture. There are simply no words to describe the impact Toni Morrison has made on all of us as readers, writers, and researchers. Equally there are no words to fully capture the imprint she has left on our collective identity. Join us in lifting up her memory and reflecting on her legacy. .. | |
| The Stone that the Builder Refused: An Interview with Naomi Long Madgett The black women’s literary renaissance of the 1970s saw the emergence of some of today’s most accomplished black women writers: Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Rita Dove, Maya Angelou, among them... |