In these days of pandemic, American democracy lies sick, burning not with fever but with fire. Every illness must come to one end or the other. Will she die, or will she get better? The[…]
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Category: Identity
Zora Neale Hurston and the Problem of Audience
My first real understanding of the power of affinity on attention came in 9th grade. When my teacher assigned a project called “The African-European Connection,” I was enthralled by history for the first time, as[…]
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Kindred
Repost in honor of Butler’s birthday, and her selection for a Google Doodle: The late, great Octavia Butler was best-known as a rare black female superstar in a genre –science-fiction –largely dominated by white men.[…]
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Wokepedia: Women Philosophers
Third in my Wokepedia series on consciousness-raising Wikipedia edits. Women Philosophers: There’s so much common wisdom, and so many authoritative sources that claim there are few to no women philosophers, so it was great to[…]
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Django Jane’s African Beat
Perhaps to showcase her many sides, the incomparable Janelle Monae released two very different songs/videos in advance of her hotly anticipated new album, Dirty Computer. A few weeks ago I showcased her funky, bubbly, sex-drenched[…]
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I Never Meta Post I Didn’t Like
In recent years I’ve more often been the interviewer than the interviewee, but I had a chance to be on the other side of the “hot seat” recently, when I was the subject of a[…]
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Reconstructivist Art: American Born Chinese
Repost Reconstructivist Art: American Born Chinese is a critically acclaimed graphic novel by Asian American writer/illustrator Gene Yang, which centers around what at first seem like three very different narratives. The first is a superhero-themed[…]
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Here come the Challengers
First things first –everyone always hates the name that gets affixed to their generation, largely because you mainly hear it first during your teenage and young adult years, when the immediately previous generation is complaining[…]
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Caroline, or Change
When I went to see what turned out to be an extraordinary production of the Broadway musical Caroline, or Change (playwright Tony Kushner, composer Jeanine Tesori) I wasn’t sure what to expect. I remembered reading[…]
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Soichi Sunami: Modern Artist
I always knew that my paternal grandfather, who died before I was born, was an unusual person. Born in 1885, fifteen years before the end of the nineteenth century, he was an early Japanese immigrant[…]
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