The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #156: Steph Auteri
“I wanted my book to open up a conversation.”
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Posts Tagged: bill cosby
The Cultural Significance of Whitney Houston
At Vela Magazine, Danielle Jackson discusses Whitney Houston as an embodiment of black excellence, and the continued erasure of black artists’ contributions to commercial music: Houston and the entire lineage of black women performers that preceded her invented techniques and sounds that have been endlessly covered and riffed upon, but they are generally under-acknowledged for their […]
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Fresh Comics #7: Giving Up The Ghost
If you’ve never heard of Whit Taylor, then now is the perfect time to discover her. Ghost (2015) is her understated masterpiece, self-published just months ago. As I began reading the book, I thought I was in for a nice little story about a young woman who wanted to meet her idols—Charles Darwin, Joseph Campbell et. al. […]
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Forgiving my Father, the Serial Rapist
This bit of vital truth to the story of how I came to be came like a puncture—strong, sharp, and sudden.
...moreWeekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Brandon Hicks compares a nostalgic past with a scary future in “When I Was A Kid… A Personal Essay.” Then, in the Saturday Essay, Josie Pickens tries to reconcile the real Bill Cosby with the one we’ve come to admire from The Cosby Show and Fat Albert. These classic programs tried to give Americans a vision […]
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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.
...moreGetting Difference Wrong
In an interview with Salon, the always-wise Roxane Gay offers her opinions on Bill Cosby, Lena Dunham, and the challenges of writing characters whose experiences differ from one’s own: We can imagine spaceships and different planets and aliens, but when it comes to writing about someone who is of a different race or a different […]
...moreStaring Our Idols in the Face
For the Guardian, Roxane Gay sums up 2014 not so much as “public figures falling from grace… as we, the public, lowering our pedestals and staring our idols in the face.”
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The Rumpus Saturday Essay: Stain
It’s hard to remember why I was silent. Maybe, like some of the women only now reporting they were raped by Bill Cosby decades ago, I was afraid I wouldn’t be believed.
...moreLaugh Track
Inconceivably, unexplainably, and, inevitably, thankfully, Bill Cosby’s on tour again. But even off-stage, he’s been there all his life: In 1976, Cosby earned a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts, after writing a dissertation about whether teachers found “Fat Albert” useful. (His conclusion: they did.) In presenting his findings, Cosby noted the “inherent […]
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