Zadie Smith interviewed Chimamanda Adichie about her novel "Americanah" at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture for the New York Public Library podcast. It was a jubilant exchange of ideas between two literary superstars. The interview was a rare meeting of two black women authors speaking to one another in a public forum about writing. They talked about "Americanah," the ethos that influenced the novel and the often unheard of experiences of black immigrants in the United States. Here is a sampling of their wide-ranging conversation.
Zadie Smith on the women in Chimamanda Adichie's fiction:"What really appeals to me in this book ["Americanah"] was the sense of a position, of an argument. Particularly of women who have not even a moment's doubt about speaking their minds which I think is quite unusual in American fiction. We're always dealing with women in relation to their men or in relation to men as status objects. But the women in your fiction here and in the other novels are somehow always themselves, always confident."
Chimamanda Adichie's on the guiding ethos of "Americanah": "I've been a dutiful daughter of literature. I have followed the rules. You know, show don't tell, that sort of thing. With "Americanah" I thought I am going to write the book I want to write. The whole idea of pushing the character, not trying to be too obvious, not to hit the reader over the head, I did not think about it with this book. If I hit the reader over the head, I hit the reader over the head."
Chimamanda Adichie on writing strong women: "The idea of a woman being strong, and simply being strong not to prove anything is normal to me."
Chimamanda Adichie on being a Nigerian immigrant in the United States: "It is very different to come to the U.S. and to realize that you are something else called black and that there are so many assumptions because of this something else that you are." "You quickly realize that you are expected to play the "good black" because you are not African American, therefore you're the "good black." "I don't know. America fascinates me because I think there is almost a willful denial of history, I guess. But really, I keep thinking, how can white people not get it if you know the history of America. Do you know what I mean? And I am a foreigner. I'm sort of looking at it from the outside." Zadie Smith on being a black British immigrant in the United States: "When I came here, I guess it's very different in England where blackness is almost obscured. We're all meant to be British. To be here was kind of joyful to have people say to you "sister" in a shop. No black person in England would ever call me "sister" in a million years, unless they were a Rastafarian perhaps." "In the UK I don't think there is a sense of a positive black identity or a strong black identity. And here, even if it has been created in defense or in response, there is so much that is beautiful in it. So much that feels strengthening. And now, when someone calls me "sister," I find it a very joyful matter." Chimamanda Adichie on black America: "The ethnic group I most admire in this country is African Americans. I just don't understand after having read the history how , no seriously, it is very personal to me. I would read the history and cry. Because I would think I don't believe all of this happened and I don't believe a people could come out of it with such grace."
Stacia L. Brown explores the narrow world of the personal essay. Tracy K. Smith shares how prose carries memory in a different manner than poetry. Rachel Kaadzi Ghanash remembers her grandfather and his will to survive in rural Louisiana andLos Angeles. Tyger Williams has written two hit movies in his career, twenty-two years apart. The fallacy of school choice.The band Death is getting immortalized at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. If you happen to be in a place where "The Golden Girls" isn't playing three hours a day on basic cable, treat yourself to some quotes and dialogue from Dorothy, Blanche, Rose and Sophia. Listen to Tony Geary talk about his career as Luke Spencer, the first anti-hero on daytime television.
Bengali intellectual M.N. Roy's philosophy of Radical Humanism and his vision for an anti-colonial utopia in Mexico City. English has changed dramatically over the last five hundred years. Documenting the fall and rebirth of the National Natural History Museum in Paris.
Source: irishtimes.com
The scientific discovery which shuffles the deck of human history. The practice of photographing enslaved African women in Brazil in the late 1880's. Joan Acocella on Elmore Leonard. The American Dream plays favorites.
Sonia Sanchez is a poet and teacher who has stood steadfast in her calling to celebrate and examine the diversity of black American life. Her poetry was an essential element of the Black Arts Movement. Ms. Sanchez's scholarship and activism were key to the development of Black Studies as an academic discipline. Her poems are enlightening calls to action both personal and political. They also inspire reflection and compassion.
In honor of Sonia Sanchez's 81st birthday, the legend in her own words.
"Malcolm"
do not speak to me of martyrdom,
of men who die to be remembered
on some parish day.
i don’t believe in dying
though, I too shall die.
and violets like castanets
will echo me.
yet this man,
this dreamer,
thick lipped with words
will never speak again
and in each winter
when the cold air cracks
with frost I’ll breathe
his breath and mourn
my gunfilled nights.
he was the sun that tagged
the western sky and
melted tiger-scholars
while they searched for stripes.
he said, “fuck you, white
man. we have been
curled too long. nothing
is sacred, not your
white face nor any
land that separates
until some voices
squat with spasms.”
do not speak to me of living.
life is obscene with crowds
of white on black.
death is my pulse.
what might have been
is not for him/or me
but what could have been
floods the womb until I drown.
Evelyn C. White offers insight into the pioneering career of Althea Gibson, the first black tennis icon. Ms. Gibson is the subject of the latest PBS American Masters documentary.
The heroine's journey cannot be told with a single story. SuperSelected has put together a list of 10 movies about young black women on the cusp of adulthood. H/T poc-creators.tumblr.com
Mae Jemison shares her thoughts on determination, resilience
and focus.
Source: wikimedia.org
Some of the most whimsical and intricate hair and nail art
was on display at the Bronner Bros. International Beauty Show in August.
NYmag.com produced a slideshow of the artistry.
"Citizen: An American Lyric" is a rumination on
the psychic and physical toll of anti-black racism in the U.S. It illuminates
the emotional second-guessing black people have become accustomed to in an
effort to make sense of the insanity of racism. The heartbreaking implications
of casting black people as the 'Other' are at the heart of "Citizen."
The reader is asked to bear witness to what black Americans experience daily-
casual slights; the assumptions of inferiority; the bizarre, schizophrenic
duality of hyper visibility and benign invisibility.
The poems reveal to the unaware reader that black people are
told in thousands of ways their lives do not matter. For the reader
who has lived the daily humiliating terrors of racism, "Citizen"
gives voice to a reality often too painful to be spoken.
The black citizen is a social construct. The black citizen
is a mythical creature both magical and monstrous. The black citizen is the
fool and the hustler, the whore, the pimp and the entertainer. The black citizen
is anything but a child of God. The black citizen lives without grace, but
always grants forgiveness. The black citizen is an enigma.
Dr. Ainissa Ramirez, PhD is a materials scientist. She is
also a teacher who wants to make science easily understood. In a short video,
Ramirez used ice cream to explain how different sizes of ice crystals in snow
packs cause avalanches. She also solved the mystery of why melted and re-frozen
ice cream doesn't taste good.
Ramirez is one of the teachers NPR is honoring in its
"50 Great Teachers: A Celebration of Teaching" series. Acacia Squires
wrote an enthralling and educational introduction to Dr. Ramirez and her work
on the NPR website.
"The lighter the load, the freer the journey." -Bethann Hardison, Stylelikeu interview
The video interview of Bethann Hardison for Stylelikeu's What's Underneath project has been shared thousands of times since being published on June 2, 2015. The legendary model, modeling agency owner and activist shared insight into living a meaningful life while getting undressed.
The video's popularity is due to Ms. Hardison's captivating presence. She is a thoughtful and curious woman who embraces herself without apology. Ms. Hardison is the essence of cool.
Bettye LaVette is a soul survivor. She is the greatest
living R&B singer most people have never heard. LaVette's deep, rapturous
voice excels at portraying the anger and pain of love gone wrong. She sings
with the passion of a woman who understands the tenderness of falling in love
and the bitterness of breaking up. LaVette released a hit single "My Man-
He's a Lovin' Man" in her teens and chased the fame of her first record
for the next forty years.
The moment before Bettye LaVette walked on the stage at the
2008 Kennedy Center Honors, she would have been remembered in the history of
R&B as a footnote. That night she sang "Reign Over Me" in
celebration of Kennedy Center honorees The Who. Her performance brought Pete
Townsend to tears. Roger Daltry was mesmerized. Fellow honoree Barbra Streisand
was engrossed by Bettye's re-defining rendition of The Who classic. The moment
the last note left her lips, Bettye LaVette's career was reborn.
The reversal of fortune decades in the making is the central
story of LaVette's memoir, "A Woman Like Me." With the help of David
Ritz, she recounts the experience of having an incredible voice that turned
heads with a career that went nowhere. The memoir is an honest remembrance of a
life full of bad luck, terrible choices and missed opportunities. She is not
shy. Bettye is open about her sexual exploits and fundamental enjoyment of weed
and booze. Her candor includes sharing her plain-spoken support of domestic
violence. "I realize it's politically incorrect to admit this, but the
sight of a man slapping a woman did not horrify me. Context is everything. In
the context of the Detroit showbiz culture of the sixties, men slapped their
women around. They just did. It may sound radical to say so, but some women
needed that. Some women even benefited from that." Her faulty logic on
domestic violence would be welcome in a conference of pimps and human
traffickers.
Bettye Jo Haskins became Bettye LaVette when she asked a
singer named Ginger LaVette if she could have her last name. With her new name,
Bettye LaVette took to the clubs of Detroit and fell in love with the music and
culture of the R&B scene. "In music-crazy Motor City, no one was
crazier for music than I was." Her encyclopedic memory provides an
invaluable history of Motown and those Motown adjacent that cannot be found
anywhere else.
LaVette's memoir is filled with fascinating and dramatic
encounters. The characters in her world rose to the level of cinematic
archetypes. She described her first singing mentor Johnnie Mae Matthews as
"looking like Humphrey Bogart after a bad fight. She had cuts up and down
her face, and forearms as big as Popeye's. Ugly as sin, but she had a voice
that could shatter glass." Her lifelong friend Marrie Early lived an
independent and sexually liberated lifestyle Bettye craved. "Marrie was
queen of Miami, a city that didn't even like blacks. But there was no man-
black, white, or orange- who didn't like Marrie. Of her many wonderful
qualities, the best was her freedom. She was free to fuck whomever she wanted,
and her lover was free to do the same. ...She was the first single woman I'd
met with her own house." The various men in her life also left a mark in
her prodigious memory. Some supported her financially. Robert Hodge "basically got me through the nineties," LaVette wrote. Others abused her. The
first line of "A Woman Like Me" provides a vivid illustration of the
terror Bettye LaVette endured at the hands of a pimp.
For those acquainted with LaVette in the 1960's the sight of
her at The Kennedy Center Honors must have been a shock. Bettye continued to
play small clubs in Detroit when Motown headed to Los Angeles. The remaining
R&B scene was busted. Every attempt she made to gain a foothold in the
music industry fell apart. LaVette had a decade’s long run of what she called
"buzzard luck.” Buzzard luck was an
unrelenting streak of misfortune. Her mother died, her sister died, recording
sessions didn't pan out and promised record deals never materialized. She was
shut out of royalties. Her career was a piecemeal collage of small club gigs, a
short-lived TV show in Detroit, a traveling production of the musical “Bubbling
Brown Sugar,” and help from her friends.
Bettye LaVette's resilience proved to be as powerful as her
voice. "Luck had never seemed to go my way, and I'm not sure it was luck
that turned the tables. I'd credit the change to pure tenacity. I was simply
too headstrong to quit." A lifetime of buzzard luck could not stop Bettye
LaVette. "A Woman Like Me" ends in triumph. There was no other
option.
Thursday, July 16 was the 153rd anniversary of Ida B. Wells'
birth. Ms. Wells was the original activist polymath. She applied her formidable
intellect and journalistic skills to the unpopular project of ending state
sanctioned tyranny against black people. She led the anti-lynching movement while
also being a pioneer in civil rights, women's rights and free speech.
You can read Ida B. Wells' 1892 pamphlet "Southern
Horrors: Lynch Laws in All Its Phases" at gutenberg. org
She dedicated the pamphlet to her zealous supporters.
"To the Afro-American women of New York and Brooklyn, whose race love, and
earnest zeal and unselfish effort at Lyric Hall, in the City of New York, on
the night of October 5, 1892- made possible its publication, this pamphlet is
gratefully dedicated by the author."
Wells was celebrated yesterday with tributes to her
unwavering commitment to equality.
Hillary Crosley Coker at Jezebel wrote a well-researched and
inspired article highlighting the history of Wells' activism.
Hark! A Vagrant posted a marvelous cartoon celebrating her relentless quest for justice.
Vox honored Wells for the way she used observable data about lynchings to craft a multifaceted approach to raising awareness and outrage about the practice.
In Nona Faustine's White Shoes series, she casts herself to stand for the women who survived the horrors of the Middle Passage and were then sold into a life of unrelenting terror. Her work is courageous and beautiful and heart wrenching. With her body, Faustine shows us enslaved Africans are in every sinew of this nation. It's bricks and mortar, fields and streams, and rocky coastlines harbor the degradation of slavery. Wall Street, the hub of international capitalism, was the auction block.
Susannah Mushatt Jones, Source: Oaks Senior Living
Ms. Susannah Mushatt
Jones is 116 years-old today and the oldest living person in the world. She has the aura of a person who has unlocked the meaning of life. Ms. Jones is the originator of the
"treat yourself" philosophy of life. According to her niece Selbra
Mushatt, Ms. Jones continues to appreciate fine lingerie and bacon. I am going
to make the claim that undergarments exquisitely designed to
enhance the beauty of the body and delicious salty meats are the secrets to
longevity. This is wild conjecture on my part, but I'll allow it.
As we
celebrate Ms. Jones, let us not forget the woman who made this possible. 116 year-old Jeralean Talley of the "don't waste my
time" face and "I can smell the stupid on you" wrinkle of the
nose died on June 18, ceding her crown of the oldest and the baddest to Ms.
Susannah Mushatt Jones.
Earlier this year the artist Lorna Simpson gave a video
tour of her new studio in Brooklyn. It was white, bright and
expansive. When Simpson appeared on the screen to speak about the space, she
exuded the calm and certitude one expects from an artist of her magnitude. The video
was created for an exhibit of the work of British architect David Adjaye. The
tour also functioned as a phenomenal display of fortitude and presence. Black
women artists like Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, and Mickalene
Thomas are esteemed in the Art world, but the portrait of the artist in the studio
is still overwhelmingly that of a white man.
The portrait of the artist in the studio is a meaningful image. In The New Yorker, Lilly Lampe articulates its power. "The studios of famous artists are fascinating for the double insight they provide us: on the one hand, a view of the creative process; on the other, a view of the creative life." The artist in the studio also provides a view of what is possible.
Simpson's studio tour inspired me to find pictures and videos of black
women artists ensconced in their creative workplaces. In some
of the photographs the artists are in the midst of creation; in others they
are posed next to or in front of a completed piece. There is a sense of pride
and accomplishment in the photos. Seeing those artists in the realms of their
creation is a reminder of the audacious feat of black American women making art
and claiming the professional title of 'artist'. In an interview with Charles H.
Rowell of Callaloo,Lois Mailou Jones spoke about the struggles
of being a black woman artist in the mid-20th century. "I owed very much
to my white friend Céline who would take my paintings to the juries. They never
knew that the artist was black. That was very much in my favor. It's been a
very unusual career. I would also send or ship my work to the Philadelphia
Academy or to the National Academy of Design. Invariably, the works would be
hung, and they would never know that the artist was black. I remember going to
the Philadelphia Academy to see one of my paintings which had been accepted.
While I stood there looking at it, the guard saw me looking at the painting and
said, "I guess you like art, don't you?" I said to myself that he
doesn't know that the painting is mine hanging there. [Much laughter.] And so
that's how it was way back in those early days; I was exhibiting at all of the
big museums, but they never knew that I was black because I either shipped my
works or had a white person deliver them. Now you see how difficult it
was."
Lois Mailou Jones was not alone in being erased from her own work. Sister Rosetta, the mother of Rock and Roll is little known beyond music aficionados and students of African-American history. It is important for black women artists to be seen and acknowledged. Once they are seen, their creative output can be recognized as vital, skillful, and beautiful without qualification. The portrait of the black woman artist in her studio is a statement of being in a world comfortable erasing her from the historical record.
Selma Hortense Burke Sculptor
Augusta Savage Sculptor
Elizabeth Catlett Printmaker and Sculptor
Dr. Samella Lewis Painter and Printmaker
Interview with Dr. Lewis begins at :22 seconds
Lois Mailou Jones
Painter
Faith Rinngold
Painter, Sculptor, Perfomance Artist
Betye Saar
Painter, Multimedia and Installation Artist
Kara Walker
Mixed-media, Sculptor, Painter, Video and Silhouette Artist
“The one thing I could do is outwork them and I actually
did.”- Mellody Hobson
Mellody Hobson’s commencement address to USC’s 2015
graduating class was both pragmatic and inspirational. She delivered a message
about the importance of diversity and tolerance in the spirit of community and
personal responsibility. It would have been easy and expected for her speech to
focus on practical advice for future captains of industry. Instead, she
challenged the graduates who will likely achieve positions of power in their
careers to recognize that they are part of a larger dynamic community. Hobson
used her platform to encourage the graduates to expand their worldview. “It’s so
easy to get trapped in a self-selected subset of humanity. Yes it feels
comfortable, but it is also extraordinarily confining. There is a whole world
out there, why limit yourselves. … Do more than just accept diversity, seek out
diversity. I promise it will make you more interesting, more understanding and
basically smarter. And here’s another benefit, when you have the courage to
expand your world, you expand the entire world. Because tolerance scales.
Person by person we can end stereotypes and remove barriers to opportunity.
Although this change begins with awareness, it actually does not end there. We
need action.”
To urge presumably well-educated young people in the 21st
century to seek out people different from themselves reveals a sad truth.
Americans live, work and relax in a segregated society. This is the land of
opportunity where everyone does not have equal access to opportunity. By
acknowledging the discrepancies between lauded civic ideals and reality, Ms.
Hobson created the space for graduates to think about how they perceive
themselves and the people who they presume may not be like them. “Just as I
told you that you can do or be anything, I want you to believe that that’s true
for anyone and everyone.” That statement is one of the most powerful in the
address because it acknowledges the unconscious bias that has unintended
negative effects on the lives of so many people.
For graduates to achieve personal or professional success
Hobson called on them to be conscious of their conduct. “I urge you to
participate fully not in a cocky or smug way, but with confidence and humility.
Be willing to speak up and stand out,” Hobson said. She then changed the tone
of the message, “I know first-hand this can be very hard at times for women and
minorities who are desperate to fit in. I’ve seen a lot of women hang back and
say, “tell me who you want me to be and I’ll be it.” Instead a better attitude
really is: this is who I am and I have value and I hope that you like it, but
if you don’t, this is who I am.” Hobson's call to the graduates to expand their
sense of community and to be authentic in their interactions required a context
she framed as “just add bravery.” The phrase on its face has the feel of an
empty, feel-good platitude. What does it mean to “just add bravery?” For Hobson
it means to take decisive action to achieve a goal. Hobson knows bravery pays
off. She is the chairwoman of DreamWorks Animation, CEO of Ariel Investments,
and a director on the corporate boards of Estee Lauder and Starbucks. Hobson is
also one of six children of a single mother. She described the ethos of “just add
bravery” in three equations:
Equation #1: Hard work plus bravery equals success.
Equation #2: Imagination plus bravery equals creativity.
Equation #3: Love plus bravery equals happiness.
If the graduates take one thing from Hobson’s address they
would be wise to remember ‘just add bravery.’
"I think the Battle of Versailles captured the sense of transformation that was such a part of the 1970s. Each of the American designers, in their own way, reflected change. Anne Klein captured the new feminism. Halston was part of the rise of celebrity culture. Bill Blass and Oscar de la Renta both were examples of the distance that American designers and the American fashion industry had come. Stephen Burrows spoke to the social liberation. And certainly the black models—and their impact on the show and influence on the other models—captured the tumultuous racial climate."- Robin Givhan, author of The Battle of Versailles."
"By the early ’70s, she was making 15-foot-tall “very hairy
and fetishy” charcoal hybrids of penises and screws, a play on “screwing,” as
in fornication, and “getting screwed,” as in being mistreated. “The idea is
funny, but the execution was very raw,” she says. “They were very warlike and
missilelike and ominous.”
"If you read anything about Susan Sontag written since
her death in 2004, it won’t take long for you to stumble across the fact that
she could be, as Terry Castle puts it in her agonizingly generous essay
"Desperately Seeking Susan," "weallyweally mean!" Sontag’s arrogance, her
condescension, her inhospitality — often, the earlier and more prominently
these ad feminam excoriations figure in the review at hand, the less earnest
the engagement with her work that follows. (One can’t help but notice that the niceness
of her male peers is rarely considered so central to their legacy; the press
hath no scorn like for a woman-fury.) Eventually, this preoccupation becomes
more than a distraction — it becomes a crutch to excuse shallow inquiry into
her work. That is not the problem with Daniel Schreiber’s Susan Sontag, first
published in German and translated by David Dollenmayer, the first biography
published since her death. It offers an opportunity to reassess how we approach
the last great public intellectual."
"With the release "The Thrill is Gone"
(1969), B.B. King solidified his role as Black music's ambassador to the world.
Throughout the 1970s King also found crossover success with singles like
"Ain't Nobody Home" (1972) and "To Know You Is To Love You"
(1973), which was written and originally recorded by Stevie Wonderand Syretta
Wright; Wonder appears on the King version, effectively capturing two
generations of black music listeners, at a moment when Wonder was ascending to
his own iconic status. By the time King released 1974's Friends, with the title
track and the instrumental "Philadelphia," which sounds like the best
of what was produced at Sigma Sound Studios in that era, the mainstream pop
audiences were gone, looking more for nostalgia from the Claptons and Steve
Millers of the world than forward thinking from "old" Blues musicians."
“We’re constantly being bombarded with the same image of
black people, over and over again—the same tropes played out again and again in
media and in movies and in journalism and popular culture. So to see something
that is contrary to the dominant narrative is so refreshing,” says Shantrelle
P. Lewis, the curator of “Dandy Lion” who began documenting the black dandy in
2010. “When [black men] walk inside this exhibition, they see themselves
reflected on the wall, and it’s a very powerful thing.”
"Librarians have frequently been involved in the fight against government surveillance. The first librarian to be locked up for defending privacy and intellectual freedom was Zoia Horn, who spent three week in jail in 1972 for refusing to testify against anti–Vietnam War activists. During the Cold War, librarians exposed the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s attempts to recruit library staffers to spy on foreigners, particularly Soviets, through a national effort called the Library Awareness Program."
The Bird (my eldest kid) and I listen to a lot of music
together. Our drives to school this week have been dominated by Koko Taylor and
Dionne Warwick. On the way home it has been Johnny Cash every afternoon.
Listening to music together is a fundamental part of our family life. There
isn't any censorship of content or hierarchy of genre. The musical relationship
the Bird and I have is an extension of the way I learned to appreciate and love
different kinds of music as a kid. Music was everywhere and part of everything.
There was R&B, Soul and Rock & Roll. My mom had a love for Standards
she embedded into my soul. When visiting her family in the Caribbean, Soca and
Country played all day. The only break was the news on BBC World Service. At
home with the Mexican side of my family, Rancheras and the songs of the
mariachi filled the days. On Saturday mornings, my aunt cleaned the house while
listening to Pedro Infante and Juan Gabriel on the hi-fi. Before I could choose
music for myself, my elders' musical tastes became the soundtrack of my life.
The musical foundation of my childhood bloomed into a teen
love of LA Hair Metal, New Wave and Rap. College was all about Classic Rock. I
am dabbling in Opera now and coyly flirting with Bluegrass. The Blues has taken
over my life.
There is always more music to consume the heart and fill the
ears. Every so often, I'll share a short list of the music that's making me
happy in a post called 'The Passionate Listener.' Here is the first installment:
Carmen McRae 'Ms. Jazz' is one of my all-time favorite musicians. The Passionate Listener could only begin with her.
I don't understand a word they are singing, but thy are feeling the song and so am I. Bryn Terfel, Judith Howard, Marcelo Alvarez, and Denyce Graves are the singers.
'Oya' and 'Mama Says' by Ibeyi because one song is not enough.
