Poet Notes #1

[by Hoke Glover]

The world of poetry is like many of those integrated worlds that exist in America. There a careful balance is kept between the minority percentages and the hidden rules that govern the overall image of the enterprise. It is a neighborhood of sorts. If the amount of Blacks involved reaches 40 percent, there is a tipping point of sorts and some whites leave as they feel uncomfortable, and suddenly it becomes a Black neighborhood.

I am not sure the above scenario has ever occurred in the world of poetry.

ICYMI: The Last Two Weeks in Black Writing (2/20 - 3/5)

- KU Ph.D. student Amanda M. Sladek considers Toussaint L'Ouverture and the problematic "slave narrative" genre for the HBW Emerging Scholars series.

- Jerry W. Ward, Jr. remembered his former classmate Anne Moody, author of the memoir Coming of Age in Mississippi.

- HBW recapped the kick-off of the Black Literary Suite: Black Writers with a Kansas Connection.

- Thabiti Lewis considered Sam Greenlee's novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door in the context of the urban revolts of the 1960s and today.

- Inspired by Joel Christian Gill's #28daysarenotenough, Book Riot's Derek Attig gave suggestions for Black History Books for the Whole Year.

- Poet and memoirist Maya Angelou is to be honored with a U.S. Post Office "forever" stamp.

- Ilyasah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X and co-author of the new young adult novel X, wonders what her father would have to say about today's activists.

- Not strictly "writing," but too wonderful not to include: Derrick Clifton talks about the "Because of Them We Can" ad campaign that dresses black children up as their inspirations.

- KU Associate Professor of English Giselle Anatol discussed her new book, The Things That Fly in the Night: Female Vampires in Literature of the Circum-Caribbean and African Diaspora, with KU News.

- Tickets are still available for the final three performances of KU Theatre's production of A Raisin in the Sun on March 6-8.

Sam Greenlee's THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR, Urban Revolts of the 1960s, and Beyond

[by Thabiti Lewis]

50 years ago, in 1965, the Voting Rights Act was signed. This also happens to be the year that Watts went up flames.

The Watts uprising in California left 1000 people injured and 34 people dead, and it led to more than 3900 arrests because of years of police brutality. In 2014, in cities across the United States--from Ferguson and St. Louis to Chicago and New York--there was unrest as people organized to protest police brutality and a justice system that repeatedly refused to indict police officers that killed unarmed black men (black women, too, have not been immune to murder at the hands of police).

Sam Greenlee’s 1969 novel The Spook Who Sat By the Door captured the spirit of the many revolts in the 1960s, leveling a harsh critique of America’s failure to deliver on its democratic ideals and promises to black folk. The revolt in Chicago that explodes at the end of Greenlee’s novel and catches fire in cities across America mirrored the racial disturbances in major cities in 1964, 1965, and 1967, and the uprisings in more than 100 cities across the country when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968.  It also mirrors Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown was murdered. The Spook is a unique novel because it is more than a response to the contradictions of American democracy. It is calculated art, void of blindness or naiveté, offering an effective example of discourse of black protest for the future.

Black Literary Suite Kick-Off: Black Writers with a Kansas Connection

[by Meredith Wiggins]




On Wednesday, February 25, from 3 - 4:30 p.m., HBW and the KU Libraries co-hosted Black Literary Suites: Black Writers with a Kansas Connection.

The kick-off event featured a poster display, a self-guided audio tour, a display of relevant books from HBW's collections, and a preview of HBW's video tribute to John A. Williams.


 








Over the course of the 90-minute event, dozens of students, faculty, staff, and community members gathered to learn more about the history of black writers like Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Frank Marshall Davis, and Langston Hughes in the Sunflower State.












The BLS poster display will remain up in Watson Library's fourth-floor Hallway Gallery through most of March, so if you haven't gotten a chance to visit yet, there's still time! 

Many thanks to all those who attended the event - and especially to the KU Libraries for their generous support of HBW's programming!