There Is Simply No Time for This: Whose Streets? and Civil Rights Cinema
It is unlikely I will see the US justice system evolve toward an egalitarian ideal in my lifetime. But Whose Streets? does offer a clearly visible North Star. ...more
Posts Tagged: Barack Obama
Where You Put It on the Line: A Conversation with Mychal Denzel Smith
Mychal Denzel Smith discusses his debut nonfiction book Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, how the activist space has changed in recent years, and who he is writing for. ...more
The Big Idea: Bill McKibben
Journalist and environmental activist Bill McKibben discusses whether our environmental crisis can be improved under our new political administration, climate change denial, and manifestations of resistance. ...more
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 11): “Skinhead”
Using dramatic monologue, Smith unmasks the skinhead’s anger to fend off threats to his way of life. ...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Tell Me Something Good
I need to feel that I can be a woman and be black in this present cultural climate. ...more
Readers Report: The Emperor’s New Clothes
A collection of short pieces written by Rumpus readers pertaining to the subject of “The Emperor's New Clothes.” ...more
Binary States of America: A Letter to Obama
In the end, although I wanted you to be more like Charles Bronson or Malcolm or Luke Cage, I am very proud to have witnessed your historic presidency—the successes, and even the disappointments. ...more
Cook the Books
...moreCook’s portraits are usually accompanied by texts distilled from interviews she conducts with her subjects (afterward, she says, because she prefers the shoot itself to remain as meditative as possible). This provides her, and her audience, with a verbal layer of insight not normally accessible to photographers.
Choosing Stories: On Partisanship, the Media, & American Ideology in 2016
What kind of change do I want, and what does fighting for it look like, today? ...more
Letters to Laura from a McDonald’s in Brooklyn
Tonight my loneliness is infinite and I could eat dinner or dance with my limbs wild because there is no gravity keeping me grounded. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Ben H. Winters
Ben H. Winters discusses his new novel Underground Airlines about an America where the Civil War never took place, writing speculative fiction, and modern racism. ...more
The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Angela Flournoy
My ambition is personal. I don’t think I need to succeed so that the race can succeed. ...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Bill Cosby’s Faux Legacy
Bill Cosby was never the man, the icon, the protector and illustrator of black culture, the guide, the genius we have created in our minds. ...more
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Midnight in the Century
...today’s poetry apologists for the Iraq war just keep repeating their intelligence error odes. Wouldn’t it be better, however, if they would address the horror of the failed effort in Iraq? ...more
Satirical America
Has the US turned into a satire of itself? Consider how quickly Congress has gone from championing Freedom Fries to chastising President Obama’s absence from the Paris peace march. Over at the LA Times, David L. Ulin looks at why Americans are choosing irony over satire:
...moreIs it coincidence, then, that the rise of postmodernism in the 1970s overlaps almost exactly the decline of satire?
The Pleasure (and Privilege) of Indignation
Indignation clicks on in moments of perceived injustice. Unchecked, it rolls quickly out of control, gaining momentum at the expense of perspective. ...more
The Week in Greed #15: Seven Unpopular Truths About Last Night’s Great Debate
1. Mitt Romney convincingly portrayed a sympathetic human being.
...moreThe Post-Fact-Check Campaign
For weeks now, the Romney campaign has run ads claiming that President Obama has gutted the work requirement for welfare recipients.
The response has varied. Fact checkers Politifact and the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler have called this attack what it is–a lie.
...moreSame-Sex Marriage Roundup
To almost no one’s surprise, last night North Carolina became the 31st state to ban same-sex marriage. This is the second time North Carolina has done this–the first time was just a state law; this one was a Constitutional amendment. This Constitutional amendment, though, does more than simply ban same-sex marriage.
...moreThe Dress Doesn’t Make the Priest
I am going to tell you my favorite story of how a flower acquired its name. It’s the story of the ranunculus.
...moreIshmael Reed On The “Jim Crow Media”
This last year Ishmael Reed published a book of satirical essays targeting the current American media: Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers.
Despite being a MacArthur Fellow, a critically-acclaimed author of nine novels and numerous other volumes of poetry, essays and criticism, Reed, a long-time resident of Oakland, CA had to go to a Canadian publisher to publish this book.
...moreThe Baffler 2.0
Can a resuscitated left-wing publication—a print publication!—thrive in the hostile economic conditions of 2010? The editors of The Baffler are betting it can.
To Err Is Human
A memoir of the war in Afghanistan asks questions about war and responsibility and what it means to be an American after 9/11.
...more