Un Poco Low Coups

Un Poco Low Coups
Author: Amiri Baraka
Publisher:
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2004
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Poetry. African American. In this latest chapbook from one of the 20th century's most vital and revolutionary authors, poems are set visually on canvas-like pages, blurring the line between visual and poetic art. "Whether it's politics, music, literature, or the origins of language, there is always a historical and time/place/condition reference that will always try to explain why I was saying both how and for what"--Amiri Baraka.

Traveling Texts and the Work of Afro-Japanese Cultural Production

Traveling Texts and the Work of Afro-Japanese Cultural Production
Author: William H. Bridges
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2015-06-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1498505481

Traveling Texts and the Work of Afro-Japanese Cultural Production analyzes the complex conversations taking place in texts of all sorts traveling between Africans, African Diasporas, and Japanese across disciplinary, geographic, racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural borders. Be it focused on the make-up of the blackface ganguro or the haiku of Richard Wright, Rastafari communities in Japan or the black enka singer Jero, the volume turns its attention away from questions of representation to ones concerning the generative aspects of transcultural production. The contributors are interested primarily in texts in motion—the contradictory motion within texts, the traveling of texts, and the action that such kinetic energy inspires in readers, viewers, listeners, and travelers. As our texts travel and travail, the originary nodal points that anchor them to set significations loosen and are transformed; the essays trace how, in the process of traveling, the bodies and subjectivities of those working to reimagine the text(s) in new sites moderate, accommodate, and transfigure both the texts and themselves.

Playing in the Shadows

Playing in the Shadows
Author: William H. Bridges
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2020-02-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0472054422

Playing in the Shadows considers the literature engendered by postwar Japanese authors’ robust cultural exchanges with African Americans and African American literature. The Allied Occupation brought an influx of African American soldiers and culture to Japan, which catalyzed the writing of black characters into postwar Japanese literature. This same influx fostered the creation of organizations such as the Kokujin kenkyū no kai (The Japanese Association for Negro Studies) and literary endeavors such as the Kokujin bungaku zenshū (The Complete Anthology of Black Literature). This rich milieu sparked Japanese authors’—Nakagami Kenji and Ōe Kenzaburō are two notable examples—interest in reading, interpreting, critiquing, and, ultimately, incorporating the tropes and techniques of African American literature and jazz performance into their own literary works. Such incorporation leads to literary works that are “black” not by virtue of their representations of black characters, but due to their investment in the possibility of technically and intertextually black Japanese literature. Will Bridges argues that these “fictions of race” provide visions of the way that postwar Japanese authors reimagine the ascription of race to bodies—be they bodies of literature, the body politic, or the human body itself.

Ethnic Literatures and Transnationalism

Ethnic Literatures and Transnationalism
Author: Aparajita Nanda
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2014-11-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317683188

As new comparative perspectives on race and ethnicity open up, scholars are identifying and exploring fresh topics and questions in an effort to reconceptualize ethnic studies and draw attention to nation–based approaches that may have previously been ignored. This volume, by recognizing the complexity of cultural production in both its diasporic and national contexts, seeks a nuanced critical approach in order to look ahead to the future of transnational literary studies. The majority of the chapters, written by literary and ethnic studies scholars, analyze ethnic literatures of the United States which, given the nation’s history of slavery and immigration, form an integral part of mainstream American literature today. While the primary focus is literary, the chapters analyze their specific topics from perspectives drawn from several disciplines, including cultural studies and history. This book is an exciting and insightful resource for scholars with interests in transnationalism, American literature and ethnic studies.

With Fists Raised

With Fists Raised
Author: Tru Leverette
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2021-05-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1800857926

There are deep black nationalist roots for many of the images and ideologies of contemporary racial justice efforts. This collection reconsiders the Black Aesthetic and the revolutionary art of the Black Arts Movement (BAM), forging connections between the recent past and contemporary social justice activism. Focusing on black literary and visual art of the Black Arts Movement, this collection highlights artists whose work diverged from narrow definitions of the Black Aesthetic and black nationalism. Adding to the reanimation of discourses surrounding BAM, this collection comes at a time when today’s racial justice efforts are mining earlier eras for their iconography, ideology, and implementation. As numerous contemporary activists ground their work in the legacies of mid-twentieth century activism and adopt many of the grassroots techniques it fostered, this collection remembers and re-envisions the art that both supported and shaped that earlier era. It furthers contemporary conversations by exploring BAM’s implications for cultural and literary studies and its legacy for current social justice work and the multiple arts that support it.

Alternative Publishers of Books in North America

Alternative Publishers of Books in North America
Author: Byron Anderson
Publisher: Library Juice Press, LLC
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2010-02
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1936117223

This directory is a unique reference tool that gathers information on significant alternative presses--126 U.S. presses, 19 Canadian, and 18 international presses having either a North American address or distributor. Thirty-three presses are new to this edition.

American Poets and Poetry [2 volumes]

American Poets and Poetry [2 volumes]
Author: Jeffrey Gray
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 786
Release: 2015-03-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1610698320

The ethnically diverse scope, broad chronological coverage, and mix of biographical, critical, historical, political, and cultural entries make this the most useful and exciting poetry reference of its kind for students today. American poetry springs up out of all walks of life; its poems are "maternal as well as paternal...stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff that is fine," as Walt Whitman wrote, adding "Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion." Written for high school and undergraduate students, this two-volume encyclopedia covers U.S. poetry from the Colonial era to the present, offering full treatments of hundreds of key poets of the American canon. What sets this reference apart is that it also discusses events, movements, schools, and poetic approaches, placing poets in their social, historical, political, cultural, and critical contexts and showing how their works mirror the eras in which they were written. Readers will learn about surrealism, ekphrastic poetry, pastoral elegy, the Black Mountain poets, and "language" poetry. There are long and rich entries on modernism and postmodernism as well as entries related to the formal and technical dimensions of American poetry. Particular attention is paid to women poets and poets from various ethnic groups. Poets such as Amiri Baraka, Nathaniel Mackey, Natasha Trethewey, and Tracy Smith are featured. The encyclopedia also contains entries on a wide selection of Latino and Native American poets and substantial coverage of the avant-garde and experimental movements and provides sidebars that illuminate key points.

Transition 114

Transition 114
Author: IU Press Journals
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2015-02-20
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0253018587

Published three times per year by Indiana University Press for the Hutchins Center at Harvard University, Transition is a unique forum for the freshest, most compelling ideas from and about the black world. Since its founding in Uganda in 1961, the magazine has kept apace of the rapid transformation of the African Diaspora and has remained a leading forum of intellectual debate. This issue of Transition—"Gay Nigeria"—pays tribute to those who "agitate the establishment." Gay Nigeria grapples with anti-gay sentiment in Africa through the case-in-point of Nigeria's recent Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, and the global backlash against it. Ayo Sogunro, Rudolf Pell Gaudio, and Davis Mac-Iyalla introduce readers to the complexities of being queer in Nigeria. The editors also remember Amiri Baraka (1934-2014), championed by Molefi Kete Asante as "a righteous defender of human freedom." Komozi Woodard, Ishmael Reed, and Baraka's daughter Kellie Jones add their recollections of the controversial poet-activist. The issue is further graced by tales quintessentially diasporic: a Ghanaian slave-fort turned five-star resort by a British ex-pat; a West African merchant-missionary returning former slaves to his Gold Coast homeland; and tips on how to freak out your American roommate. With incarceration rates of black Americans continuing to soar, Micol Seigel wants to know who makes bank in the lucrative world of bail. Also, is American cinema ready for a black woman protagonist? And finally, enjoy an interview with director Steve McQueen.

Black Post-Blackness

Black Post-Blackness
Author: Margo Natalie Crawford
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2017-05-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0252099559

A 2008 cover of The New Yorker featured a much-discussed Black Power parody of Michelle and Barack Obama. The image put a spotlight on how easy it is to flatten the Black Power movement as we imagine new types of blackness. Margo Natalie Crawford argues that we have misread the Black Arts Movement's call for blackness. We have failed to see the movement's anticipation of the "new black" and "post-black." Black Post-Blackness compares the black avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s Black Arts Movement with the most innovative spins of twenty-first century black aesthetics. Crawford zooms in on the 1970s second wave of the Black Arts Movement and shows the connections between this final wave of the Black Arts movement and the early years of twenty-first century black aesthetics. She uncovers the circle of black post-blackness that pivots on the power of anticipation, abstraction, mixed media, the global South, satire, public interiority, and the fantastic.

Public Scholarship in Literary Studies

Public Scholarship in Literary Studies
Author: Rachel Arteaga
Publisher: Amherst College Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2021-05-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1943208220

Public Scholarship in Literary Studies demonstrates that literary criticism has the potential not only to explain, but to actively change our terms of engagement with current realities. Rachel Arteaga and Rosemary Johnsen bring together accomplished public scholars who make significant contributions to literary scholarship, teaching, and the public good. The volume begins with essays by scholars who write regularly for large public audiences in primarily digital venues, then moves to accounts of research-based teaching and engagement in public contexts, and finally turns to important new models for cross-institutional partnerships and campus-community engagement. Grounded in scholarship and written in an accessible style, Public Scholarship in Literary Studies will appeal to scholars in and outside the academy, students, and those interested in the public humanities. "There are books of literary criticism that attempt to reach crossover audiences but none that take this particular public-humanities-focused-on-literary criticism perspective."--Kathryn Temple, Georgetown University Contributions by Rachel Arteaga, Christine Chaney, Jim Cocola, Daniel Coleman, Christopher Douglas, Gary Handwerk, Cynthia L. Haven, Rosemary Erickson Johnsen, Anu Taranath, Carmaletta M. Williams, and Lorraine York.