132 Search results for "novel"

Last week, the folks over at Racialicious re-posted a piece by Macon D., the creator of the blog, Stuff White People Do.  The article, “Stuff White People Do: Warmly Embrace a Racist Novel,” addresses the 50th anniversary celebration of Harper Lee’s only novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, published in the summer of 1960.  Macon D. […]

Despite Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best intentions, her character Uncle Tom has become a pejorative term aimed at black American’s accused of selling out to white folks. In the novel, he was supposed to be a good man, a Christian man, but it was Christianity that led him to, even under questionable conditions (say slavery), continue […]

…has been increasingly difficult for me to do these last couple of weeks.  Seriously.  I looked up and it was March.  My dissertation has been haunting me so much I feel like I’m in some 21st century, black version of an Edgar Allan Poe novel. I’m finishing up a blog on the US census that […]

One thing that really irks me about white supremacy is that it allows folks–mostly white men–to say really bigoted and racist things, and make lots of money doing it.  Racism is not just the process of institutionalizing prejudice and methodically discriminating against black folks and other people of color, it’s also a very lucrative business, […]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5FYahzVU44 Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire is a film about an obese, sixteen year-old black girl growing up in Harlem. She is illiterate, has a really mean mama who beats, rapes, and berates her. She has two children by her father, who also infected her with HIV. Think Color Purple. After getting […]

I am my mother’s daughter and my mother is the daughter of my grandmother. And both their stories and silences speak through me. I begin with this mantra because spiritually and mentally I desperately need to understand why tears stained and wrinkled my cheeks as I watched the movie Precious. Yes, I am a Cancer […]

Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry said Precious was awesome and that everyone should go see it. Since I am the most obedient of Negroes, I saw it last Friday. If Flavor Flav is the world’s greatest hype man, this duo is officially the world’s greatest hype machine. I found Precious slightly underwhelming, uninspiring, and lacking […]

I’m having trouble embedding the video in question.  Please view it here. Remember last year when all the white gay people were mad at black people because Prop 8 passed in California?  Well, it wasn’t a fluke.  We’re still their whipping boys (er, bois?).  Last week, my internet boyfriend AC (again, the only man I’d […]

I like Mad Men. It’s a good show, well-written and -acted. All of that. I’m not turning myself into a Mad Men avatar like other fans, but I get the allure. (Besides, there’s no maid’s uniform.) The world of Mad Men is sleek, shiny, colorful; it totally messes up my “the only colors available in […]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca_vv6urOCY Just last week, I stumbled upon a movie trailer on YouTube that really caught my attention.  The independent film, Precious, tells the story of Claireece “Precious” Jones, a Harlem-bred, morbidly obese, pregnant, HIV-positive, illiterate, junior high school student who struggles with low self-esteem.  If that isn’t already an earful, Precious’ story is further complicated […]

Last Friday (July 24), author E. Lynn Harris died. Though his passing is getting some attention, by comparison, the deaths of other, more famous people have peppered the mainstream media at a much higher rate. A lot of folks (still) don’t know who he is. Either way, learning of his death gave me pause. Not […]

A few years ago, when I was still taking graduate school course work, I got into a “disagreement” with a colleague about race and class. We had just left our course on mid-20th century black literature, and were hanging out in the department lounge for some strange reason–something I’d never do now. I think we […]