Our Slaves: Meditations on the Traffic of Black Bodies in Print (Part 2 of 2) April 25, 2013: I want to think through these questions raised in my last post a bit differently than Saidiya Hartman and Toni Morrison. Their investigation tends to focus upon the playing in the dark archive of slavery by white writers and artists. I am interested in locating the discussion of the trafficking of black bodies in print in the African-American [...] by Roger Reeves

Can’t Pay Your Rent? Langston Hughes Can Help! March 14, 2013: Slate posted an interesting article today showcasing Langston Hughes's collection of Harlem rent party advertisements. Kind of like the Facebook invites of their day, "These cards, collected by Langston Hughes and held with his papers in Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, advertised 'rent parties' to be held in Harlem in the [...] by Harriet Staff

Poets, Who Would They Have Voted For? November 7, 2012: Now that the multibillion dollar decision of 2012 is behind us, the good folks at the Huffington Post are wondering who famous authors would have voted for. Let's take a look at Langston Hughes's candidate of choice: Langston Hughes Who he'd vote for: Barack Obama Why?: "I swear to the Lord, I still can't see, why Democracy means, [...] by Harriet Staff

Langston Hughes Comes to the Apollo with ‘Ask Your Mama’ August 17, 2012: The New York Daily News reports that "Ask Your Mama!," a show based on the work of Langston Hughes that premiered at Carnegie Hall in January, will be coming to the Apollo Theater. More details, according to the paper: The show...is based on Hughes’ collection “Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz.” It comes courtesy of composer [...] by Harriet Staff

What Does a Black Poem Look Like? April 9, 2011: The speculations of contemporary thinkers on the future of humankind tend to fail and often seem silly in retrospect. Only those with the power, position and money to design that future (on hugely political, scientific and economic scales) can predict it, because they control and influence the change in and the passage of the four governmental [...] by Wanda Coleman

“…like a bird of prey, the profile of night…” April 30, 2010:            --from “Facing It,” Yusef Komunyakaa’s great poem            about war and race and America and the Vietnam Memorial. The university where I currently teach has more political diversity among its student body than most of the liberal-to-left institutions where I’ve previously taught. It’s never [...] by Daisy Fried