I Don’t Sing to Be Heard, I Do It to Keep On: An interview with Ashanti Anderson
“It is impossible to be at peace without understanding.”
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Posts Tagged: michael brown
The Blacker the Berry, the Quicker They Shoot
Fear is real. Pain is real. Loss is real. Suffering is real.
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Racism Shouldn’t Be Shocking: Toppling American Myths
Let us teach something new to the next generation that speaks to the lessons we’ve learned.
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The Causality Runs Both Ways: A Conversation with Joshua Clover
Joshua Clover discusses his book Riot.Strike.Riot, mediating between individual agency and structural determination, and finding hope in student action.
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Carving Out Enough Space on the Cloud: Talking with Hanif Abdurraqib
Hanif Abdurraqib discusses They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, honoring survival by showing up, and refusing to be governed by genre.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Brooke C. Obie
Brooke C. Obie discusses the historical basis for her debut novel, Book of Addis, writing to dismantle white supremacy, and why Black speculative fiction is integral to her survival.
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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.
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On Grief and Inheritance: A Conversation with Brionne Janae
The poet Brionne Janae discusses her debut poetry collection After Jubilee, intergenerational trauma, and writing her way into historical personae.
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Slang and Swagger: Riffing with Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang discusses his latest book, We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation, his work in hip-hip journalism, and the beauty and humanity of political protest.
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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.
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The Rumpus Interview with Emily Raboteau
Emily Raboteau discusses her essay, “Know Your Rights!” from the collection, The Fire This Time, what she loves about motherhood, and why it’s time for White America to get uncomfortable.
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Boyz n the Hood, Chi-Raq, and America 2016
And while the faces and nomenclature between these historically discrete agents of change differ, the one governing commonality remains the same: unfettered gun ownership and correlative violence play a pivotal role.
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Southern Girl: Beyoncé, Badu, and Southern Black Womanhood
None of the imagery of Lemonade is foreign to those of us who grew up in the South or who have Southern roots.
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The Recipe to Decolonized Love is in Beyoncé’s Lemonade
“There is a curse that will be broken,” she promises.
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He Doth Protest Too Much
I’ve begun to question my place in society, my place in a country that wants me to remain silent. Mostly, I question my choice to remain silent.
...moreJ. Cole and Ryan Coogler on Racial Inequality
During an event hosted by Blackout for Human Rights at Harlem’s Riverside Church for #MLKNOW, J. Cole and director Ryan Coogler discussed racial inequality, police brutality, and the importance of allowing themselves to confront events such as the violence perpetrated on Michael Brown and Oscar Grant through their art. Watch the full interview below, along […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Margo Jefferson
Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Margo Jefferson talks about her new memoir, Negroland, and about growing up in an elite black community in the segregated Chicago of the 1950s and 1960s.
...moreCanonized Outrage
Can one speak about suffering if one hasn’t experienced it? Kenneth Goldsmith has long been a figure of tension in the literary community: at once a savior for the conceptual intellectualists and avant-garde, and a malicious clown bent on provocation and appropriation. In a profile for the New Yorker, Alec Wilkinson dives into Goldsmith’s humble […]
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I’ll Fly Away: Notes on Economy Class Citizenship
I want to break from a continued and systematic white supremacy so pervasive it is entrenched in the vernacular I use to express myself.
...moreClaudia Rankine and #BlackLivesMatter
The American imagination has never been able to fully recover from its white-supremacist beginnings. Consequently, our laws and attitudes have been straining against the devaluation of the black body. Despite good intentions, the associations of blackness with inarticulate, bestial criminality persist beneath the appearance of white civility. This assumption both frames and determines our individual […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Daniel José Older
Author Daniel José Older talks about his new novel, Shadowshaper, noir influence in urban fantasy, gentrification, white privilege and the publishing industry, and why we need diverse books, now more than ever.
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One American Death Threat and Disaster
It is difficult to tell when Goldsmith is being genuine. That is the nature of his work, which he has suggested people don’t need to read to understand, and of his online presence.
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Return to Braggsville
Two authors take a trip that they did not take to a place that’s no place (but could be anywhere) in Wiley Cash’s feature on novelist T. Geronimo Johnson and his new book, Welcome to Braggsville.
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The Rumpus Interview with Danez Smith
Poet Danez Smith discusses advocacy, translating spoken poetry for the page, and his new collection [Insert] Boy.
...moreOutrage Laced With Vulnerability
When the grand juries failed to indict Darren Wilson or Daniel Pantaleo, they added to a lineage of injustices enacted against black people in America. Rumpus contributor Kaveh Akbar speaks to Claudia Rankine about her poetry collection Citizen, which explores the microaggressions supporting the system that let it happen: I didn’t have a directive in […]
...moreScience Fiction Can Show Us How
In the wake of the events surrounding the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, science fiction can offer a particularly compelling alternative to illustrate a future without violence and inequality. Mary Hansen at Yes! talks with author and activist Walidah Imarisha, who coined the term “visionary fiction:” I think that science fiction and visionary fiction, […]
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
This week, last week, men who have taken lives are walking away unpunished, unquestioned even. We have their victims’ names: Mike Brown. Eric Garner. We have their final words: Hands up, don’t shoot. (Six shots fired.) I can’t breathe. (Repeated until his breath is forever gone.) To stand with these two men is to go […]
...moreEric Garner: A Rumpus Roundup
In July, unarmed black man Eric Garner died after he was placed in a chokehold by a white police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, on Staten Island, a suburban borough of New York City. This might sound eerily similar to the case of Michael Brown. Or similar to Akai Gurley. Or to any of the hundreds of […]
...moreSo Little Has Changed
Following the grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson for shooting and killing Michael Brown, Edwidge Danticat reflects on the overwhelming occurrence of police brutality against people of color: Today, one might generously refer to such acts as micro-aggressions. That is, until they turn major, until they turn deadly. Until a man who is […]
...moreFerguson: A Rumpus Roundup
Early in August, unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer, Darren Wilson, in Ferguson Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. While protests broke out in the weeks following Brown’s death, Wilson remained free, awaiting a grand jury indictment. Grand juries decide whether or not a crime has been committed, not […]
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