Of constant fascination for me are the ways in which literature employs skin color to reveal character or drive narrative—especially if the fictional main character is white (which is almost always the case). Whether it is the horror of one drop of the mystical “black” blood, or signs of innate white superiority, or of deranged […]
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Entrepreneur Launches First-Ever Interactive Digital Book Platform for Black Children
Donna Beasley is making history. For the first time in the publishing world, a digital-first book library has been launched to serve Black and Latino children. Kazoom Publishing
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Jerry Pinkney’s Illustrated World, An Escape from a Nation in Conflict
To this day, as the world gets more complicated, with more stress on me, my family, my community, and our world, I can retreat to my imagination and the act of making pictures.
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UT Professor Tackles Sordid Tale of 1880s Dismemberment
University of Texas professor Kali Nicole Gross has a homicidal maniac as her muse — and that led her to write “Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America.”
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‘Balm’: A D.C. Writer’s Moving Tale of Hope and Healing in Slavery’s Wake
In 2011, Washington writer Dolen Perkins-Valdez published “Wench,” an unsparing look at the brutal relationships between Southern plantation owners and the slaves they kept as mistresses.
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Pillars of Black Media, Once Vibrant, Now Fighting for Survival
For the black community in Chicago and elsewhere, Johnson Publishing Company represented a certain kind of hope.
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A New Movie About Bob Kaufman, a Jewish African-American Street Poet Shrouded in Myth
“And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead” does little to dispel the mystery surrounding the artist, which is why it works.
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How Social Activism is Evolving in African-American Churches
Marla Frederick once wanted to be a lawyer. But in college, she fell in love with discussing religion, reveling in opportunities to debate with her closest friends about how Christianity applied to their lives and whether Islam was the true religion.
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A Sculptor of Black Heroes Leaves a Legacy
Because the artist Inge Hardison created towering statues and small busts of schoolchildren, families and heroes like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., she was often described as the lady who builds giants.
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7 New Poignant and Political Books by African Authors to Read This Year
“The Face: Cartography of the Void”, Chris Albani, “100 Days” by Juliane Okot Bitek
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