What We Inherit: Talking with Chanelle Benz
Chanelle Benz discusses her debut novel, THE GONE DEAD.
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Join NOW!Chanelle Benz discusses her debut novel, THE GONE DEAD.
...moreLangston, I am finally at the table, eating with everyone.
...moreMartha Rosler discusses half a century of creating political art.
...moreRosellen Brown discusses her new novel, THE LAKE ON FIRE.
...moreI’ve seen it coming. This is where it passes through.
...moreCan you see it now? Is the image different in your mind yet? A thing you can’t unsee.
...moreLove of country, some argue. With their boots firmly planted in my chest as I struggle to protest. No, that is not love, but blindness.
...moreIt 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.
...moreWe can’t hide from our history and we can’t pass it on to future generations.
...moreFor Huffington Post’s Highline magazine, Jason Fagone profiles a trauma surgeon working to make a small dent in our country’s problem with gun violence. At Catapult, Abbey Fenbert writes a funny, heartfelt essay about trying to ban books in the seventh grade.
...moreTo deny violence is to do it. Our surprise at Sandy Hook and Cold Springs and Columbine is a form of violence in its own right.
...moreThe violence came in and we were not just in danger of being victims of it. We were in danger of being violent ourselves.
...moreJoe Okonkwo discusses his debut novel Jazz Moon, the quest for self-discovery, creative inspiration, and what it means to build a family when home is so very far away.
...moreAs writers, we must write it out. Tear off the veils and air the rotting fruits.
...moreEighty years ago, Wash Jones appeared as a minor character in William Faulkner’s masterpiece on American identity and self-invention, Absalom, Absalom! From a craft perspective Jones was put in for a purpose: to demonstrate the role that white working-class men played in maintaining white supremacy among the wealthiest people in America before the Civil War, […]
...moreI reached out to her, and she reached back. A hug I’ll never forget.
...moreParker set out to bring a different kind of “slavery movie” to audiences. And it is different.
...moreWhat is lost still has substance, is malleable, can take on new impressions, and be molded again to our experience, often resulting in the most lasting force that determines how we see the world.
...moreThe sitting down to write, convincing myself that my voice matters, even though there are so many telling me that it doesn’t.
...moreThe Screaming Eagle of Soul has released a psychedelic video to accompany the single “Change for the World” that dropped last month. The song’s video matches its political message with imagery from protests of the Civil Rights Era alongside the artist as he challenges us to “change the false pretense,” “change the hate,” and “change our […]
...moreAmina Gautier interviews novelist Ravi Howard, author of Like Trees, Walking and Driving the King.
...moreWhile it isn’t unusual to find Killer Mike speaking about race and politics (see his past lecture at MIT on Pitchfork), Render appeared at Florida State University last week to lecture again on racism and civil rights. “Step out of your comfort zone and engage another human being as a fair and honest equal,” he […]
...moreLast year on our way to and from getting married in New Orleans, my now husband and I went on a civil rights pilgrimage. We went to Montgomery and Birmingham; we went to Selma. We drove the Pettus Bridge there in Selma a dozen times, imagining, feeling a weighty sadness all over. I want to […]
...moreI want to break from a continued and systematic white supremacy so pervasive it is entrenched in the vernacular I use to express myself.
...morePerhaps the city looked more poignantly lovely because I was conscious of its tragic history.
...moreJohnetta Elzie and DeRay McKesson, the authors of America’s first full scale 21st century civil rights movement, get the full profile treatment at the New York Times Magazine.
...morePeople have been writing about civil rights for years, but it’s taken Hollywood until now to warm up to the subject (of course, not enough). Bill Morris traces the history of the movement’s cinematic representations leading up to Ava DuVernay’s recent triumph: Movies about the civil rights movement — the successful ones– have tended to […]
...moreOver at the NYRB, Darryl Pinckney deconstructs Ava DuVernay’s Selma, starting from seat of a laymen cinema-goer, and then tying it all back to what actually happened.
...more“You want your cup to overflow,” he said. “My cup is causing a flood.”
...moreToday we honor the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His impact on the world is sort of impossible to overstate. As one African-American man who grew up before the Civil Rights movement put it, “Dr. King ended the terror of living in the South.” Here’s an illustration by Jason Novak to mark the occasion:
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