Tag: African American

Mémwa Nwa

Mémwa Nwa

Denise Frazier and Sultana Isham

Mémwa Nwa (Black Memory) traces how themes of love and memory in AfroCreole music by modern Louisiana composers and musicians rearticulate and reaffirm the socio-political and historical condition and context in which they were created. This generated a practice of performative resistance to the forgotten memory of AfroCreole sonic contributions in the nineteenth century.

Trees

Trees

Zaire Love

A short film by Zaire Love.

A Gathering of Friends

A Gathering of Friends

Jameela F. Dallis and Gale Greenlee

Reflections, prose, and poems remembering Randall Kenan by Black former students and friends, old and new.

Enshrining Proud Shoes in Brick and Mortar

Enshrining Proud Shoes in Brick and Mortar

Hilary N. Green
“The Laws Have Hurt Me”

“The Laws Have Hurt Me”

Adriane Lentz-Smith
Rooted

Rooted

Michelle Lanier, photographs by Allison Janae Hamilton

Personal reflection, oral history excerpts, a “runaway slave” advertisement, and descriptions of land through a womanist lens all weave together to demonstrate a modality Lanier names “Womanist Cartography.” Using the tools of memoir, folklore, and experimental prose, Lanier invites readers to re-engage the notions of southern land through the lives, dreams, and minds of Black women. The inclusion of multi-modal artist Allison Janae Hamilton’s photography further amplifies these counter-cartographic concepts. In the wake of contemporary cataclysms around southern monuments and place-making, based on traditional hegemonies, this essay presents alternative narratives for what and where is deemed sacred in the American South, and by whom.

Makeshifting

Makeshifting

Kimber Thomas, with illustrations by Hudd Byard

Drawing on oral history interviews, Kimber Thomas examines the resilient creativity of Black women in the Crossroads community of the Mississippi Delta during Jim Crow. Using material objects like Prince Albert tins and brown paper bags, the women defined freedom for themselves in the absence of sociopolitical freedom.

Worth Westinghouse Long Jr.

Worth Westinghouse Long Jr.

Tyler DeWayne Moore
400

400

by Jamaal Barber
The Talk

The Talk

Sonny Kelly, illustrations by Bill Thelen
Notes Toward an Essay on Imagining Thomas Jefferson Watching a Performance of the Musical “Hamilton”

Notes Toward an Essay on Imagining Thomas Jefferson Watching a Performance of the Musical “Hamilton”

Randall Kenan, with illustrations by Ginnie Hsu
Replaying a Useful South

Replaying a Useful South

Lauren Pilcher