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Excerpts
They clashed. She
with her knee length H&M designer suits, suede pumps,
Gucci bags and him with his biker clothes; body-length
black leather coats, spiked bracelets, faded jeans,
laced boots and tattoos. She alternated between driving
a small black Golf and the public transit while he rode
a huge sparkling Harley Davidson motorcycle and took
public transit once in a while. In fact it had been on
the Bathurst Streetcar where they had met; one of those
few times when she took the Bathurst Street route.
Jane Musoke-Nteyafas,
FORBIDDEN FRUIT
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Long before the cars arrived, a cloud of
brown dust would rise in the distance from the dry gravel road
to announce the ball players. Later cars with whole families,
teenagers, and people from the church down the road would park
along the edges of the field, straddling the narrow road.
Latecomers would block the driveway of the store and have to be
asked to move their cars in order to provide turn around space.
But that was Walter's job.
Brenda C. Wilson,
Always
on Sunday
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Afadina Dotse
staggered out of Vodunon Axuadegbe’s shrine towards
his BMW 525i car, mumbling “I should’ve left them
alone.” A medium-built customs clearance agent with
close-cropped hair, a thick moustache, and wearing a
rich lace dress, Afadina sagged against the car
door. Akoli Penoukou,
Into His Arms
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It was 1:30 in the morning. Lucinda was half a jigger away from inebriated as
she held a double shot of Seagram's and 7up poised before her glossy, hot pink
painted lips. Precisely at that moment, Lucinda made up her mind "since I'm
going to die eventually, I might as well live tonight" which meant she was
not going home alone tonight. In fact, she wasn't going home at all, at least
not to her own home. Kalamu ya Salaam,
Forty-Five
Is Not So Old
The iron bars closed shut behind me. The black man sat on the edge of
the cot, his elbows on his knees, his forehead in the palms of his
hands. He did not look up until I spoke. I was in suit and tie. He
thought me at first to be a lawyer, a white man.
Rudolph Lewis,
The
Confessions of Walter Cotton
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Racism: A History,
the 2007 BBC 3-part documentary explores the impact of racism on
a global scale. It was part of the season of programs on the BBC
marking the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the
British Empire. It's divided into 3 parts.
The first, The Colour of
Money . . .
Racism: A History [2007]—1/3
Begins the series by
assessing the implications of the relationship between Europe,
Africa and the Americas in the 15th century. It considers how
racist ideas and practices developed in key religious and
secular institutions, and how they showed up in writings by
European philosophers Aristotle and Immanuel Kant.
The second, Fatal Impact
. . .
Racism: A History [2007] - 2/3
Examines the idea of
scientific racism, an ideology invented during the 19th century
that drew on now discredited practices such as phrenology and
provided an ideological justification for racism and slavery.
The episode shows how these theories ultimately led to eugenics
and Nazi racial policies of the master race.
And the 3rd, A Savage
Legacy . . .
Racism: A History [2007] - 3/3
Examines the impact of
racism in the 20th century. By 1900 European colonial expansion
had reached deep into the heart of Africa. Under the rule of
King Leopold II, the Belgian Congo was turned into a vast rubber
plantation. Men, women and children who failed to gather their
latex quotas would have their limbs dismembered. The country
became the scene of one of the century's greatest racial
genocides, as an estimated 10 million Africans perished under
colonial rule.
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"Damn Walter," she swore under her
breath. "Already let in every damn fly in Mississippi
before I get one customer." The sound of the slamming door
set the flies off again in a steady swarm across the kitchen.
Through the door, she saw Walter unloading the last of the beer
with his round body moving slowly in the heat. Looks like next
summer we're going to need to hire some help, she thought.
Folks who didn't even like baseball came to
Pooles' to buy fish, fresh fried whiting, caught in the
Luxapalila River. She battered it in cornmeal, the yellow kind
with just a little flour and deep fried it in plain old
shortening. There was no secret to her cooking except for the
little Cajun seasoning she added. She'd learned that years ago
down in New Orleans. All kind of folks doing anything. She
closed her eyes and could almost smell the crawfish cooking, the
jazz playing in the street and feel the steamy, sticky heat on
the waterfront.
"Oh, to be young agin' in New
Orleans," she said as she opened her eyes.
"What 'cha say there dear?" asked
Walter as he brought in a tray full of bread. Always
on Sunday
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So he didn't see the wrinkles around
his granny's eyes, he didn't hear the weariness in her
voice. Instead, he explored the house: its construction
was that of a wooden snake, its head wide and crowded,
its body a tortuous little tunnel of smaller pores and
cuticles open and closed, locked and unlocked: these
rooms were the site of his exploration. Some rooms were
too uninviting even for his curious mind. A makeshift
tool shed that he was afraid to step into for fear that
he would bump into something and his gramps's vast store
of tools and supplies would come raining down on his
little forehead—aside from the physical pain, how would
he explain it when they heard the crash and came
running?
There was a room across the way from
the tool shed that was equally ominous, though he
chanced entrance here: the room had no lights so far as
he could see and he had to stumble around inside it to
find its treasures. Old dismantled rifles, a baseball
bat with an incomprehensible signature scrawled across
it, black mote-crusted books that looked too ugly to
open; magazines with naked women splayed in indecorous
postures. Then, the grandparents' room: a low bed and
bedstand; a picture above the bedstand of them looking
fine on their wedding day; a stained and tattered Bible
opened to its first page where birth and death dates of
Freemans unfamiliar to his eyes were scrawled one after
the next, 1829-1857, 1863-1900, and so on. But the names
were foreign to him. He felt that the dates meant more
than the numbers and names that composed them, that the
numbers and names were the vestiges of some older truth
unknowable to him.
fresno gone Kevin Norris
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Bill Moyers Interviews Douglass A. Blackmon, author
of
Slavery by Another Name:
The Re-Enslavement of Black
Americans from the Civil War to World War II (2008)
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06202008/watch2.html
Audio:
My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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The Prophet of Zongo Street: Stories—Vivid
images of African life and familiar snippets of
expatriate life infuse this debut collection by a
Ghana-born writer and musician. On the fictional Zongo
Street in Accra, young children gather around their
grandmother to hear a creation story from "the time of
our ancestors' ancestors' ancestors" in "The Story of
Day and Night." In "Mallam Sille," a weak, 46-year-old
virgin tea seller finds soulful strength in marriage to
a dominant village woman. Other stories take place in
and around New York City, depicting immigrants
struggling with American culture and values. A Ghanaian
caregiver vows not to "grow old in this country" in
"Live-In," while in "The True Aryan," an African
musician and an Armenian cabbie competitively compare
tragic cultural histories on the ride from Manhattan to
Brooklyn, achieving humanist understanding as they reach
Park Slope: "I looked into his eyes, and with a sudden
deep respect said to the man, 'I'll take your pain,
too.' " Several stories close in a similarly magical,
almost folkloric epiphany, as when sleep becomes an
attempt "to bring calm to the pulsing heart of Man" in
"The Manhood Test." Ali speaks melodiously but not
always provocatively in these tales of transition and
emigration.
—Publishers
Weekly |
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updated 13 October
2007
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