February 03
When we talk about Black History Month, we talk about the rich, diverse histories of Black politics, cultures, and causes in the United States and abroad. To center these stories for the month of February should serve as a launch point for a full year of investigation into Black histories, and a reminder that the struggle for Black liberation and anti-racist movement building is work that cannot be limited to just 29 days. Celebrate Black History Month every month.
May 05
It's Keith Haring's birthday today! In celebration and remembrance, here's an excerpt from Clayton Patterson's Resistance, a radical social and political history of the Lower East Side. The excerpt below is quoted from an interview between Resistance contributor James Cornwell and Leonard Abrams, the publisher of the now defunct East Village Eye, about the East Village's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't 1980s gallery scene.
December 08
Harriet Hyman Alonso, author of Martha and the Slave Catchers, a book for middle school readers, speaks with Catherine A. Franklin an education professor who created the Martha and the Slave Catchers curriculum guide. They discuss some of the aspects of Martha and the Slave Catchers that relate to history and teaching, William Llyod Garrison's unruly but ethical children, and some questions for today, including: "Who are the modern abolitionists?" and "How do we resist unfair laws?"
February 22
What does it mean to have, or to love, a black body? Taking on the challenge of interpreting the black body's dramatic role in American culture, Nana-Ama Danquah's anthology The Black Body asks thirty black, white, and biracial contributors—award-winning actors, artists, writers, and comedians—including voices as varied as President Obama's inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander, actor and bestselling author Hill Harper, and former Saturday Night Live writer Anne Beatts.
As part of our celebration of Black History Month, we're publishing Danquah's introduction to The Black Body here on the blog. It's a wise and thoughtful piece that delves into complex questions of bodies, blackness, and perception. We hope you'll enjoy.
January 17
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“The course of history does bend toward justice,
but it must be gripped hard by those who seek it.”
- Justin Sayre
In a few days, our great nation will officially put a man into office. We all know who that man is, and his name strikes great chords of fear and confusion within our democracy. But it is not his name we fear, it’s what he represents.
October 16
Excerpted from Paul Auster's A Life in Words: Conversations with I. B. Siegumfeldt, available for purchase from our site at 25% off list price.
In the conversation below, acclaimed novelist Paul Auster and scholar I. B. Siegumfeldt discuss Auster's "Portrait of an Invisible Man," which comprises one half of The Invention of Solitude and served as the pivotal piece of writing for Auster's movement into a style wholly his own. Auster discusses the hazards of literary education ("I’d come to such a point of self-consciousness that I somehow believed that every novel had to be completely worked out in advance"); the death of his father ("My father came from the generation of men who wore neckties, and apparently he kept every tie he ever owned. When he died, there must have been a hundred of them in his closet. You are confronted by these ties, which are, in a sense, a miniature history of his life."); and the vitality of the unconscious ("I understood that everything comes from within and moves out. It’s never the reverse. Form doesn’t precede content. The material itself will find its own form as you’re working through it."). We hope you enjoy!
March 06
March 6th marks the publication day of Martin Dubmernam’s extraordinary Novel/History Jews Queers Germans.
October 06
The chapter below is excerpted from Khary Lazarre-White's Passage. As Farah Jasmine Griffin put it, Passage is "a work of great originality, pain, and aching beauty. Its protagonist, Warrior, a sensitive, haunted and haunting young man, bears the burden of history: the past is always near, shaping and informing present realities of black boys like himself."