I don’t know whether to be overjoyed or annoyed at the recent Publisher’s Weeklyarticle reporting that editors in the young adult genre are paying more attention to the interests of black teen readers. I’m happy that young black readers are finally getting some love from the publishing industry, but as a longtime bibliophile I am dismayed that it took so long.
Although black teens read plenty of books that feature no prominent black characters—Stephenie Meyer’s titles, for example—the emergence of more young adult publishing programs geared toward African-Americans is in many ways a response to demand. Most editors contacted by PW agree that the publishing industry is starting to understand that black teens not only want to read about themselves but are also an economically viable readership. “The aha! moment is unfolding slowly,” says Andrea Pinkney, v-p and executive editor at Scholastic, “but it is happening.” Read more…
Mighty Mo Rodgers is a composer, lyricist, keyboardist and producer who has worked with some of the leading figures in blues history. Rodgers’ extensive writings on blues as “metaphysical music” form the basis of this unique Regents Lecture and performance. [5/2000
One of the greatest (in my judgment) African American writers was born on July 29, l934, and killed in New York on May 23, l968. His name was Henry Dumas and his death at the age of thirty four cut short a brilliant career of a poet and short story writer who gave meaning to the Afrocentric term, located.
Read Echo Tree: The collected short stories of Dumas click here
Sun Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, legal name Le Sony’r Ra; May 22 1914 in Birmingham, Alabama – May 30 1993 in Birmingham, Alabama) was a jazzcomposer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his “cosmic philosophy,” musical compositions and performances.
“Of all the jazz musicians, Sun Ra was probably the most controversial,” critic Scott Yanow said, due to Sun Ra’s eclectic music and unorthodox lifestyle. Claiming that he was of the “Angel Race” and not from Earth, but from Saturn, Sun Ra developed a complex persona of “cosmic” philosophies and lyrical poetry that made him a pioneer of afrofuturism as he preached awareness and peace above all. He abandoned his birth name and took on the name and persona of Sun Ra (Ra being the ancient Egyptian god of the sun), and used several other names throughout his career, including Le Sonra and Sonny Lee. Blount denied any connection with birth name, saying “That’s an imaginary person, never existed … Any name that I use other than Ra is a pseudonym.”clickhereforfullarticle
“In the culturally turbulent mid-1960s, the visionary, otherworldly musical being we have all come to know as Sun Ra formed a brief but tight bond with the late storyteller, activist and poet Henry Dumas. The Ark and the Ankh is a vintage 1966 document of dialogues and meditations between the poet and the musician set to the fervent musical experiments of the Arkestra recorded live at the legendary downtown New York club and haven for the insurgent black music scene, Slug’s Saloon. The Ark and the Ankh offers an essential insight into the quirkily brilliant, totally controversial and completely inimitable thought of Sun Ra candidly shared with one of his most adoring disciples. Sun Ra needs little introduction to the legion of fans his great body of work continues to accumulate. Henry Dumas has gained cult-like status as one of this centuries most important black writers. His work, which has been collected in such anthologies as Goodbye Sweetwater, has been labelled genius and brilliant by the likes of Amiri Baraka and Toni Morrison. On May 23, 1968, after leaving a rehearsal at Sun Ra’s practice space, Henry Dumas’s life was tragically cut short when he was shot to death in a Harlem Subway station by a New York City transit cop. This is the first of two intended volumes from the private tapes of Henry Dumas.”
What makes you move forward? Which are the most powerful stimulus for you? Are you doing stuff only to avoid potential dangers, or are you just curious? In today’s post I’ll talk about negative motivation versus positive motivation.
You may ask now: motivation is just the power which moves you to do stuff, are there anything like “negative” or “positive” to it? Isn’t this something related to what you do, not to what motivates you? Well, in my opinion, your motivation is directly shaping you actions. If you’re positively motivated, your action will most likely have a positive outcome. If you’re negatively motivated, your action will have an undesirable outcome.
Negative is rooted on fear, while positive is rooted in service.
The Fear Root
Fear means you’re acting on the pressure of losing something, This is what fear is: the menace of losing something: your current context, your money, your life. Fear was for a long time a fantastic survival mechanism, and for that it was a good asset on our old life kit. It was fear which made the weaker one to run or to hide when a real threat was around. And fear made the weaker survive click for more
NPR.org,July 21, 2009 · Charges against Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, have been dropped, and the city of Cambridge, Mass., has apologized for the “regrettable and unfortunate” arrest. But the fact remains that Gates, a prominent black scholar, being arrested in his own home is a chilling moment in the American experience. click here for full article
Is it enough, or too little to late? Your thoughts
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members.
Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur; however, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement.
Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities of World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s on, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music, of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy and social theory. click here for full wikipedia article
In the Begining
Surrealism as we know it today is closely related to some forms of abstract art. In fact, they shared similar origins, but they diverged on their interpretation of what those origins meant to the aesthetic of art.
At the end of the First War World, Tristan Tzara, leader of the Dada movement, wanted to attack society through scandal. He believed that a society that creates the monstrosity of war does not deserve art, so he decided to give it anti-art–not beauty but ugliness. With phrases like Dada destroys everything! Tzara wanted to offend the new industrial commercial world–the bourgeoisie. However, his intended victims were not insulted at all. Instead they thought that this rebellious new expression opposed, not them but the “old art” and the “old patrons” of feudalism and church dominion. In fact, the bourgeoisie embraced this “rebellious” new art so thoroughly that anti-art became Art, the anti-academy the Academy, the anti-conventionalism the Convention, and the rebellion through chaotic images, the status quo click here for full article
It what may be the first presidential sermon, Obama preaches to the congregation of the NAACP 100 year celebration. In an inspirational speech The Commander in Chief demonstates that he knows his Black history, is keenly aware of the challenges that Blacks face, and the importance of seeing the big picture
Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr. sued Royal Dutch Shell, saying it had culpability in his father’s death.
NEW YORK, June 18 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell’s cash payment of $15.5 million — roughly four hours of its 2008 profits — to settle a human rights case in Nigeria may not be enough to change Big Oil’s policies in the developing world.
A better incentive may be a desire to avoid the high legal costs and the bad publicity from the 13-year case accusing Shell of abuses in the Niger Delta region read more
The settlement, announced late Monday, came days before the start of a trial in New York that was expected to reveal extensive details of Shell’s activities in the Niger Delta. read more
The Shell critic Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged in 1995.
I don’t know whether to be overjoyed or annoyed at the recent Publisher’s Weeklyarticle reporting that editors in the young adult genre are paying more attention to the interests of black teen readers. I’m happy that young black readers are finally getting some love from the publishing industry, but as a longtime bibliophile I am dismayed that it took so long.
