Chimamanda Adichie and Zadie Smith in Conversation at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

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. 

Listen to the podcast.

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."

Links for the Voracious

Death

 





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 and Los 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.

Links for the Voracious

 

 

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

 

 

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. 

 

 

Harriet by Elizabeth Catlett

Source: elizabethcatlett.org

Celebrating Sonia Sanchez

 

Source: duke.edu

 

 

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.

 

 

 







 

 

 

 

 



Links for the Voracious

Source: ebony.com

 

 

Grace Jones through the lens of Queer history.

 

 

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.

 



 

Octavia Butler's "Dawn" is in development for TV.

 

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.

Source: newpittsburghcourieronline.com



 

 

 

 

 

 





"Citizen: An American Lyric" and the Toll of Black Citizenship

 

Source: Columbia University

 

"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. 

Read an excerpt from “Citizen: An American Lyric."

Claudia Rankine in conversation with Bim Adewunmi of BuzzFeed.

Dr. Ainissa Ramirez Brings Science to the People

Source: NPR.org

 

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.