African American Review articles from June 2008

African American Review archives from June 2008

Out of St. Louie into the world unbound: an interview with Colleen J. McElroy.(Interview)
June 22, 2008... JLH: First, Dr. McElroy, let me thank you for agreeing to grant this interview. Please know that I truly appreciate your time and the opportunity to talk with you. May I begin by asking you what motivated you to become a writer? CJM:...

This Jamaican family: the word, and dreams.(Essay)
June 22, 2008... But now, whether or not you accept it, you understand that this is finally the message, delivered by them in shouting silences and stiffened backs whenever you summon the bravery to refer, even obliquely, to that: the message, simply, that...

Lost theaters of African American internationalism: diplomacy and Henry Francis Downing in Luanda and London.(Report)
June 22, 2008... Recent critical approaches to the global travels and connections made by African American writers and texts have revealed much regarding black internationalism's relation to artistic innovation, U. S. imperialism, and the formation of black...

In memoriam Pinkie Gordon Lane.(In memoriam)
June 22, 2008... When Pinkie Gordon Lane passed away on December 3, 2008, Louisiana and the nation lost a gifted lyric poet, whose long and distinguished career as an educator, administrator, community leader, and racial pathbreaker culminated in her...

San Quentin, 1900.(Poem)
June 22, 2008... San Quentin, 1900 His life wasn't worth much, even less on the street where he looked but never found work. He was the first child of former slaves, born free, he was told, though he never saw ...

Tituba.(Poem)
June 22, 2008... Tituba Did she whisper the devil's secret name to young girls gathered in a circle by the winter fireplace? Or did she tell them about the island where she was born, the mambo priestess who healed...

Coltrane's Naima Narrative Transmigrated by Himself.(Poem)
June 22, 2008... Coltrane's Naima Narrative Transmigrated by Himself tra-la-de-dahdaaa tra-de-dab tra-tra-de-daaahda-de-daaahh formerly of Philly via Hamlet, North Carolina on his way to brighter in sound good all...

Fallout.(Short story)
June 22, 2008... Twenty-four biscuits steam like cow pats on the cookie sheet. When they are cool, Delphine will top each one with a generous splodge of marshmallow Fluff and squash them into sandwiches. Twelve in all: enough for ten children, one for Hank when...

Color struck.(Short story)
June 22, 2008... She sneezed over the soda. Alveeta saw it clearly from where she stood, beside stools that were empty but not available to her. Mrs. Davis had the full cup in her hand when she threw back her head and brought it down in a loud, wet, sneeze. She...

Cornetta's roominghouse.(Short story)
June 22, 2008... "I know you ain't lost your mind so far as to think vaseline is floorwax." Uninvited, Cornetta avoided the slickened wood floor and stepped direct onto the rag rug. Forbidding she stood, looking down at Mrs. Larry Simmons, her first-floor...

Then There Is Nothing.(Poem)
June 22, 2008... Then There Is Nothing I can smell the dust here. Maybe that is why I keep coming back. Today the sun is close to the window. I push my hand against the glass. Cold. Outside blue sky, clouds move softly....

Thread.(Poem)
June 22, 2008... Thread As I remember it every thread is in red. As I remember it is not how it was. Sometimes words can go through the body just to come back, a few hours later, sometimes years, sometimes seconds. ...

Mulatto.(Poem)
June 22, 2008... Mulatto Grew up in Texas the only one in school The only mule in Round Rock not in Round Rock As much in Austin as in Round Rock but Not in between the only mule at the school Across the street but there was one...

Knocking on doors.(Short story)
June 22, 2008... "Open the door, Taco!" Taco and Chu-Chu are in the room at Number Four, Alley Nine, and Section Two, of the American compound. Have been there all night. Sleeping. Taco's friend, Jesu, told me that they were indeed in there only after I...

One Mourner for Susie.(Poem)
June 22, 2008... One Mourner for Susie Crimped fan church people baptized her Tart with their spit, envied her collection plate ease, the burgeoning pile, the way people do in mountain towns. She bought comfort in life: ...

Student-inmate.(Poem)
June 22, 2008... Student-inmate Tammy needs to take the vocabulary test. With a head splayed over in a wave pattern of cornrows, she chats it up with every boy in the jail school, then complains that she is not ready, so I let her...

To Josephine from Napoleon, Black and White.(Poem)
June 22, 2008... To Josephine from Napoleon, Black and White Can you write, Josephine? Can you read the pleas woven in this casket fare, he bought me to serve tightly, Monsieur Napoleon. I will die in this suit someday. I watch you...

Amy Helene Kirschke. Art in Crisis: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for African American Identity and Memory.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Amy Helene Kirschke. Art in Crisis: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for African American Identity and Memory. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2007. 284 pp. $65.00 cloth/$24.95 paper. Art in Crisis argues that the magazine's visual material is...

Riche Richardson. Black Masculinity and the U. S. South: From Uncle Tom to Gangsta.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Riche Richardson. Black Masculinity and the U. S. South: From Uncle Tom to Gangsta. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2007. 296 pp. $22.95. Black Masculinity and the U. S. South: From Uncle Tom to Gangsta analyzes how geography, more specifically...

Barry Lee Pearson. Jook Right On: Blues Stories and Blues Storytellers.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Barry Lee Pearson. Jook Right On: Blues Stories and Blues Storytellers. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2005. 233 pp. $19.95. Jook Right On is the latest contribution from veteran blues scholar Barry Lee Pearson who, in collaboration with...

Yolanda Pierce. Hell without Fires: Slavery, Christianity, and the Antebellum Spiritual Narrative.(Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America; Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Yolanda Pierce. Hell without Fires: Slavery, Christianity, and the Antebellum Spiritual Narrative. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2005. 168 pp. $59.95. Nick Salvatore. Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the...

Edward M. Pavlic. Crossroads Modernism: Descent and Emergence in African-American Literary Culture.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Edward M. Pavlic. Crossroads Modernism: Descent and Emergence in African-American Literary Culture. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2002. 314 pp. $22.50. Ed Pavlid's study of African American modernism draws upon a wide range of literary...

John Corbett, Anthony Elms, and Terri Kapsalis, eds.: Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn, and Chicago's Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... John Corbett, Anthony Elms, and Terri Kapsalis, eds. Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn, and Chicago's Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2007. 144 pp. $25.00. This collection of artifacts concerning the...

John Edgar Tidwell and Mark A. Sanders, eds.: Sterling A. Brown's A Negro Looks at the South.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... John Edgar Tidwell and Mark A. Sanders, eds. Sterling A. Brown's A Negro Looks at the South. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. 383 pp. $35.00. As we walked together in an army of multiracial folks in the 1963 March on Washington, the light,...

Matthew Shenoda. Somewhere Else.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Matthew Shenoda. Somewhere Else. Intro. Sonia Sanchez. Minneapolis: Coffee House P, 2002. 71 pp. $14.00. "I am somewhere between home and home"--"The Calendar We Live" Matthew Shenoda's Somewhere Else is today's poetry--filled with...

Cheryl A. Wall. Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Cheryl A. Wall. Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2005. 288 pp. $19.95. Worrying the line, as a trope of repetition with a difference, expands upon Henry Louis...

Algernon Austin. Achieving Blackness: Race, Black Nationalism, and Afrocentrism in the Twentieth Century.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Algernon Austin. Achieving Blackness: Race, Black Nationalism, and Afrocentrism in the Twentieth Century. New York: New York UP, 2006. 320 pp. $70.00 cloth/$22.00 paper. One comes away from reading Algernon Austin's Achieving Blackness:...

My Soul is Anchored: poems from the mourning Katrina national writing project.(Hurricane Blues: Poems about Katrina and Rita)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... My Soul is Anchored: poems from the mourning Katrina national writing project. Harrisonburg, VA: Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University, 2006. $14.95. Philip C. Kolin and Susan Swartwout, eds. Hurricane Blues: Poems about...

Hazel Waters. Racism on the Victorian Stage: Representation of Slavery and the Black Character.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Hazel Waters. Racism on the Victorian Stage: Representation of Slavery and the Black Character. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 243 pp. $96.00. In Racism on the Victorian Stage, Hazel Waters evokes the long history of blackness in British...