It’s Tricia. Dr. Rose If You’re Nasty

My god I think I love this woman.

I read Dr. Tricia Rose’s first book, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, a couple years out of high school and it was one of the first pieces of critical text to really make the hard connections between Hip Hop, black inner city culture, technology and social justice.

Judging from this video , recorded at the Columbia College a few months back, it looks like Dr. Rose is still dropping jewels on the sometimes staid halls of academia.  Here she discusses the idea of a post racial America in the time of President B-Rock.

Props to The Black Report for the link.

Filed under: Activism, Authors, Books, Hip Hop, Politics

Literature 2.0? It’s about damned time

When Mark Amerika created Grammatron 16 (?) years ago, who knew it would take the rest of the world so long to catch up? 

Still, you have no idea how exited this article in the NYT makes me-enough to get me blogging again after umpteen months.

It’s always annoyed the hell out of me that writers were getting the short end of the stick in terms of cool digitools.  The itunes, DIY, online community model works for the music biz, but it took (and to be honest this is all still very new stuff) the creation of a functional and practical e-book reader (the Kindle, and it’s soon coming knockoffs) to actually make to idea of books integrated with media a tangible reality.  

According to the article, some enterprising capitalist types are finally seeing the light when it comes to the multimedia options available to authors.  

Filed under: Authors, Books, Marketing, Media

Mailer. 1923–2007. A Multimedia Tribute

One of literature’s most famous pugilist finally rests.

I never met the man and won’t claim to be the world’s greatest Mailer scholar, but I admired the hell out of his work and career.

Even if he tended to dip deep much into the art of spectacle, it was with a sheer force of personality you had to admire. Especially because the man behind the mess was full of such damned fine writing.

Like James Baldwin and Oscar Wilde, to me Mailer represents the ultimate man as artist. A champion of literature and culture-loud in life and brash in his search for truth-I admired his insistence that as writers, the work we create is necessary, even vital, in order to truly comprehend ourselves as humans.

Far better writers than I have summarized his life and death, so this will simply server as a link to some of his memorable moments-the sights, sounds and reviews. No matter if you loved or hated him, you’ve got to admit that we’ve lost one of the really important ones. We’ve got some big shoes to fill…

-kwan

Text

Norman Mailer Interview

The Naked and the Dead ebook

Mailer All Time Enemies List

Review of the Spooky Art

Synopsis of Mailer’s Films

Filed under: Authors, Books, Photos, Profiles , Norman Mailer, Obituary

The Arkivest: Chester Himes and Black Futurism

The Arkivest: Chester Himes
-d. scot miller

When reviewing the prolific life of Chester Himes the first lesson to learn is that as Black artists, we are the world-walkers. The second is as Black writers we are the scribes of the jubilee apocalypse.

With sixteen novels covering thirty-two years of professional writing, it is amazing that so few people know of his established presence in neither American literature nor his contributions to what is now known as Black Futurism.

And how does Chester Himes relate to Black-Futurism? Though he passed away nearly 25 years ago, and many of his writings are set in the time and place he was in, Chester Himes‘ life was, the embodiment of the Black Avant Garde and, dare I say, apocalyptic sage of the Black Futurist literary tradition.

Before the redemption narratives of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul On Ice, Himes began his writing career while serving a three-year prison bid for armed robbery by writing articles for Esquire and Harper’s.

Before Ralph Ellison addressed the perils of Black men struggling with absurd disenfranchisement in Invisible Man and Richard Wright confronted the exploitation of Black people by American Capitalism and Communism through the 40s and 50s in Native Son, Himes had nationally published two separate full-length novels- If He Hollers Let Him Go (Doubleday, 1945), and The Lonely Crusade (Knopf, 1947) – laying the groundwork for these two seminal works.

By the time James Baldwin, John A. Williams and Cecil Brown escaped this Land of the Free; Chester Himes had traveled across Europe several times and was there to greet the expatriate Black writers on Parisian shores. In the 70s, Melvin Vann Peebles stayed in Himes‘ Paris apartment while Chester, then in his late 50s, traveled through Spain in a busted Volvo, writing.

Filed under: Arkivest, Books, Profiles , Afrofuturism, Black Futurism, Chester Himes, d. scot miller

Eulipia Performance Salon 1st Anniversary Finale Gala

Eulipia Performance Salon 1st Anniversary Finale Gala

October 2^nd, 8PM (sharp)

 

Walter Kitundu

Please join us for this night of celebration and reflection.

Since October 2006, Eulipa/Knot Frum Hear has featured some of the Bay’s innovators in the worlds of word and music and continues to explore alternative spaces through performance, sound, and vision.

Filed under: Art, Books, Media, Promotions, San Francisco , Art, Jazz, Music, Performance, Poetry, Puppets

Russell Simmons: “Do You!”

Happiness, Success, Hip Hop

By Kwan Booth (May 28, 2007-Oakland Post)

Last Tuesday in a scene that resembled a southern baptist revival, Russell Simmons, the hip hop entrepreneur behind Def Jam Records, Def Comedy Jam and Phat Farm Clothing, shared the secrets of his success with over 200 people as they skimmed copies of his new book “Do You! 12 Laws to Access the Power in You to Achieve Happiness and Success.”

The discussion and book signing, which took place in the tent behind Scott’s Restaurant in Jack London Square, drew a wide range of attendees, from mothers and community activists to rappers and moguls in training, eager to soak up the experience Simmons has gained from his more than 25 years in the entertainment industry.

Filed under: Books, News , "Do you", "Russell Simmons"

Nathaniel Mackey wins National Book Award

Nathaniel Mackey wins National Book Award
By Kwan Booth (November 22, 2006-Oakland Post)
Staff Writer

In a turn of poetic justice, African American poet Nathaniel Mackey has been awarded the 2006 National Book Award for his latest poetry collection, “Splay Anthem.” With the distinction, Mackey joins a short list of black writers including poets Ai and Lucille Clifton and novelists Charles Johnson and Alice Walker.
Splay Anthem was selected from 13,000 works submitted by publishers from around the country. Mackey, known as a poet, critic, fiction writer and professor, has written 14 books during his 27 year career, while teaching literature at UC Santa Cruz and serving as editor for the influential multicultural journal “Hambone.”

Filed under: Books, News , "Nathaniel Mackey", "National Book Award", "Splay Anthem"

Dancing with Language: The Poems of Quincy Troupe

Dancing with Language: The Poems of Quincy Troupe

By Kwan Booth (April 15, 2007-Whatchusay.com)

For the over 30 years, the poet, professor, biographer and memoirist Quincy Troupe has been fooling around with words. From 1972’s “Embry” to the 1996’s “Avalanche” and up through his current volume, Troupe has made a career of reinterpreting the musicality in language. His 1989 biography of Miles Davis, took those interpretations a step further as he chronicled the life of one of the most important figures in jazz history.

“The Architecture of Language,” released in October 2006, finds the poet at a creative crossroads. Since the 1999 collection “Choruses”, Troupe has been hinting at a new direction in his work. One poem from that collection, “Song,” promises “words & sounds that build bridges toward a new tongue” and “Architecture” is Troupe’s attempt to make good on that promise. In this collection, newer, more experimental poems share space with Troupe’s classic jazz styles.

Filed under: Books, Reviews , "Quincy Troupe", "The Architecture of Language"