Watching Roots in the Age of Trump
…slavery isn’t African-American history, it’s American history.
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Posts Tagged: slavery
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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Black Panther and Strong Women
I saw myself on the big screen—the strong black woman that I am, and the stronger black woman I aspire to become.
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These Places Surround Me: Talking with Quintan Ana Wikswo
Quintan Ana Wikswo discusses her novel, A Long Curving Scar Where the Heart Should Be, delving into the facets of trauma, and her creative processes.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #128: Dunya Mikhail
“All art is somehow a kind of witness, whether to beauty or to anything else.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #125: Tyree Daye
“I think if you are really doing the work, you can’t write about America and not explore race and slavery, and that goes for any writer.”
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The Burden of Teachable Moments
My voice begins to crack so I clear my throat. I look at each one of the girls one by one. The heat in me rises. My skin feels like the Texas pavement in July.
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The Thread: Ways of Being Seen
Can you see it now? Is the image different in your mind yet? A thing you can’t unsee.
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How to Workshop N-Words
I am not willing to let go of one of the only things that truly belong to my people and me. It’s a very exclusive, very tumultuous kind of privilege.
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Not Your Auntie
What I need is for white people to stop calling the Honorable Representative Maxine Waters “Auntie.” For real. It needs to stop.
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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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Nothing Foreign about It: Talking with Omar El Akkad
Omar El Akkad discusses his debut novel American War, suicide terrorism, fossil fuels, and blankets.
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Magical Systems and Fusion Reactors: Rivers Solomon Discusses An Unkindness of Ghosts
Rivers Solomon discusses her debut novel, the importance of writing the body into a story, and more.
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The Lens Magnifies, the Mirror Reflects: What Photos from the Race War Show Us about Ourselves
[Still photos] grab what otherwise might feel too foreign to understand.
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The Human Cost: Discussing Political Storytelling with Olivia Kate Cerrone
Olivia Kate Cerrone discusses her novella The Hunger Saint and the significance of historical fiction.
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Your Patriotism Isn’t Love, It’s Blindness
Love of country, some argue. With their boots firmly planted in my chest as I struggle to protest. No, that is not love, but blindness.
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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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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 15): “Southern History”
We can’t hide from our history and we can’t pass it on to future generations.
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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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All Writing Is Political: A Conversation with Mohsin Hamid
Mohsin Hamid discusses his new novel, Exit West, hope in fiction as a form of resistance, the necessity of learning to accept social change, and how much America and Pakistan have come to resemble each other.
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When a White Man Paints Black People
[H]ere comes this white boy, Asher Mains. Red-haired too, and bearded, like the pirates that once rummaged Grenada’s coves.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #81: Chanelle Benz
Chanelle Benz’s debut collection, The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead, is filled with characters often facing a moral crossroads. The stories contain the unexpected, like a classic Western complete with local brothel as well as a gothic tale. Benz’s writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Guernica, The American Reader, and Granta.
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The Rumpus Saturday Essay: The Savage Mind, Pt. 3
To 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.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 9): “The City Limits”
[A] nation’s poetry degenerates if it does not embody the language of what is mysterious…
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Interrogating the English Language with Safiya Sinclair
To be forced to speak in the language of the colonist, the language of the oppressor, while also carrying within us the storm of Jamaican patois, we live under a constant hurricane of our doubleness.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Damian Duffy and John Jennings
Damian Duffy and John Jennings discuss their new graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler’s classic novel Kindred.
...moreTouring Trump’s America on Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad won the National Book Award on Wednesday night. In his acceptance speech he told us, “We’re happy in here; outside is the blasted hellhole wasteland of Trumpland. Be kind to everybody. Make art and fight the power.” Not only was this apt for the evening, but it also describes the […]
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The Rumpus Review of Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation
Parker set out to bring a different kind of “slavery movie” to audiences. And it is different.
...moreOn Gardening for a Dead President
At Catapult, J.D. Ho takes readers for a walk in her shoes, gardening where slaves were once forced to grow poison ivy for a president whom the world now praises in all his whitewashed glory: For obvious reasons, my life in the garden was much better than that of the slaves. One less obvious reason […]
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Dedicate Your No-Trump Vote: Quentin James
What the hell do I have to lose in this country? Honestly, I don’t know where to begin.
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