Tag: American literature
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Black History Month: Sonia Sanchez
Sonia Sanchez is one of the most influential poets of the Black Arts Movement. Read more about her from the Voices from the Gap Web site. She will be speaking tonight at Skidmore College’s Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall, Saratoga Springs at 7 p.m. The playwright, scholar and American Book Award-winning author (“Homegirls and Handgrenades”) gives […]
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Black History Month: “Invisible Man”
Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel “Invisible Man” has been called a classic of American literature. But don’t just take my word for it. Here’s an excerpt from Irving Howe’s review: This novel is a soaring and exalted record of a Negro’s journey through contemporary America in search of success, companionship, and, finally, himself; like all our […]
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Black History Month: “Up From Slavery”
Booker T. Washington’s 1901 autobiography “Up From Slavery” was a best-seller and traced the educators rise from slavery, through the mines, to his education and, eventually, the establishment of the Tuskegee Institute. Here’s an excerpt from the book (which can be found here and here): ONE day, while at work in the coal-mine, I happened […]
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Black History Month: “The Intuitionist”
This 1999 novel by Colson Whitehead imagines a world in which a new style of elevator inspectors — those who inspect via intuition — are disrupting the mainstream inspectors — the empiricists — who work by checking everything out. And in this original, fully imagined world, which has in addition to its speculative fiction — […]
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Black History Month: “The Color Purple”
Alice Walker’s 1982 novel “The Color Purple” won the Pulitzer Prize, and has been made into a movie and musical. Centering on the story of Celie, a woman who is abused and made powerless, largely because of her gender and the color of her skin, the novel moves toward her finding strength with the help […]
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Black History Month: “The Known World”
The Known World won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize and the 2003 National Book Critics Award in fiction. It is a stunning story in that it imagines the reality and consequences of a free black man in pre-Civil War Virginia who owns slaves. From the publisher: In one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, […]
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Black History Month: Toni Morrison’s “Sula”
Toni Morrison’s “Sula,” first published in 1973, was chosen as an Oprah book club pick in 2002. This is how the TV show’s Web site describes the book: Nominated for the National Book Award, this rich and moving novel traces the lives of two black heroines—from their growing up together in a small Ohio town, […]
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UNC names dorm after poet, a former slave
From the Herald Sun (with a reference to Russell Banks): CHAPEL HILL — UNC officials dedicated a dormitory on Monday to George Moses Horton, a Chatham County slave and poet who contributed greatly to the intellectual life of the university. George Moses Horton Residence Hall is the first Carolina building named after a slave. The […]
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Black History Month: “I Have a Dream”
Many people are familiar with Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous words, especially the closing of his “I Have a Dream” speech: When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of […]
Michael Janairo 