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 |
|---|---|
| BlacKkKlansman: Talking Black, Paying Forward In mid-August, BlacKkKlansman was released in theaters. Its subject is the “crazy, outrageous, incredible, true story” of Ron Stallworth’s undercover work as the first Black member of the Ku Klux Klan... | |
| “You Need to Live More”: the Power of Performance in Morgan Parker’s and Tommy Pico’s Poetry Black Poetry Day is held every year on October 17th, the birthday of Jupiter Hammon, the first published Black poet... | |
| Zero Tolerance Policy: The Realities Underneath In April, Attorney General Jeff Sessions implemented the inhumane, heartbreaking “zero tolerance” policy for people crossing the border into the United States... | |
| 25 Toni Morrison Quotes That Left Me Shook Sunday marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Toni Morrison, the first black woman to receive the prestigious award... | |
| A Review and Reading Companion to Noname’s Room 25 Noname’s sophomore album Room 25 is hypnotic and alluring. Indeed a coming of age story, this self-released project is a meditation of what the Los Angeles-based Chicago rapper calls her “darkest secrets”, and you should hear her out, like the track “Ace” (feat. Smino and Saba) says... | |
| Implacable Violence, Part One The death of Senator John McCain quickens our interest in how to deal with contemporary narratives of life history... | |
| Keeping the Faith: A Tribute Reginald Martin Poet, novelist, professor, scholar, editor, mentor, musician, and boxing enthusiast, Reginald Martin became a household name early in his career, not because he played by the rules, but because he did not... | |
| An Open Letter to Chancellor Girod Dear Chancellor Girod, I write to expose a glaring contradiction with the agreement to remove Josephine Meckseper’s “Untitled (Flag 2)”—what Gov. Jeff Colyer calls a “desecrated American flag”– from the grounds of Spooner Hall... | |
| On the Relativity of Freedom in the Free State Toni Morrison is the greatest novelist of our times, but more and more, I find myself drawn to the wisdom in her essays, like those in Playing in the Dark or earlier works like The Site of Memory and the brutal honesty revealed in “Unspeakable Things Unspoken.” The Origin of Others is her latest testament to the truth of our time, reaffirming her unique ability to read the current moment and to respond appropriately to it... | |
| Op-Ed: The Failings of the Flag Recently, KU became embroiled in a public debate over free speech and public art when Governor Jeff Colyer demanded an art installation at The Commons (Spooner Hall) be removed, which Chancellor Douglas Girod then complied. The piece “Untitled (Flag 2)” by German-born, New York-based artist Josephine Meckseper, was met with fierce and swift backlash from conservative politicians across the state. Proclaiming the piece disrespected the American flag and military personnel, critics transformed the critical discourse surrounding the original piece into some false babble about patriotism. .. |