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From The Briarpatch File
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Book Synopsis The Jazz Trope by : Alfonso Wilson Hawkins
Download or read book The Jazz Trope written by Alfonso Wilson Hawkins and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jazz Trope takes a look at the African American lifestyle through the lens of jazz, blues, and spirituals. Through the pioneering efforts of Albert Murray, Ralph Ellison, Houston Baker, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Ishmael Reed, Amiri Baraka, and other notable scholars who have related jazz, spirituals, and blues to African American life and culture, The Jazz Trope offers an opportunity to add scholarship to the perception of African American identity as a creative attempt to survive a unique history and struggle. Transcending structure and the perimeters that it limits, African American musical statements were produced out of a human need to be free. Using jazz as a metaphor for escaping slavery, jazz can be seen as a creative attempt to exceed restriction through the act of improvisation; jazz takes a known melody and changes it to create a personal identity. The literary genre of African American life reflects this melding of musical milieu. It tells through tropes of the folktale, novel, self-script, slave narrative, myth, and legend a unique American experience and history. This book also explores motives and schemes that were hidden behind musical codes, illustrating that jazz (interrelated with its foundation in blues and spirituals) existed as a pre-musical statement and, then, manifested as it is more popularly known: as a musical statement. The Jazz Trope allows students to grasp the jazz song structure within this work and liken it to the tropes that it emits: a true American identity.
Book Synopsis Readings of the Particular by : Anne Holden Rønning
Download or read book Readings of the Particular written by Anne Holden Rønning and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2007 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present collection aims at throwing light on transculturality and the identities and masks that people put on, in writing as much as in life, in an age of global levelling and the struggle for a particular place in a postcolonial world. Topics covered include: North African identity in France; cultural citizenship and the Asian diaspora; novels of beur self-identity by Maghrebi immigrants in France; Scottish fiction, Britain and Empire; memory, amnesia, and the re-invention of the past in South Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere; borders, necrophilia and history in Southern African fiction; encodings of female control; spectating in black documentary cinema; theatre, performance, and the Western presence in Africa; masks, history, transtextuality, and other aspects of Irish poetry and drama; the masking and unmasking of identity in the African-American novel; violence and Titus Andronicus in black Nova Scotian poetry; notions of the national and of indigeneity in contemporary Canadian drama; Native Canadians, space, and the city. Authors and artists treated include: William Boyd; André Brink; George Elliott Clarke; David Dabydeen; Ralph Ellison; Bessie Head; Seamus Heaney; Tomson Highway; Isaac Julien; Daniel David Moses; Paul Muldoon; Albert Murray; Jean Rhys; Sir Walter Scott; Robert Louis Stevenson; Richard Wright; and W.B. Yeats.
Download or read book The N Word written by Jabari Asim and published by HMH. This book was released on 2008-08-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned cultural critic untangles the twisted history and future of racism through its most volatile word. The N Word reveals how the term “nigger” has both reflected and spread the scourge of bigotry in America over the four hundred years since it was first spoken on our shores. Jabari Asim pinpoints Thomas Jefferson as the source of our enduring image of the “nigger.” In a seminal but now obscure essay, Jefferson marshaled a welter of pseudoscience to define the stereotype of a shiftless child-man with huge appetites and stunted self-control. Asim reveals how nineteenth-century “science” then colluded with popular culture to amplify this slander. What began as false generalizations became institutionalized in every corner of our society: the arts and sciences, sports, the law, and on the streets. Asim’s conclusion is as original as his premise. He argues that even when uttered with the opposite intent by hipsters and hip-hop icons, the slur helps keep blacks at the bottom of America’s socioeconomic ladder. But Asim also proves there is a place for the word in the mouths and on the pens of those who truly understand its twisted history—from Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle to Mos Def. Only when we know its legacy can we loosen this slur’s grip on our national psyche.
Book Synopsis Racial Discourse and Cosmopolitanism in Twentieth-Century African American Writing by : Tania Friedel
Download or read book Racial Discourse and Cosmopolitanism in Twentieth-Century African American Writing written by Tania Friedel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-06-21 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book engages cosmopolitanism—a critical mode which moves beyond cultural pluralism by simultaneously privileging difference and commonality—in order to examine its particular deployment in the work of several African American writers. Deeply influenced and inspired by W. E. B. Du Bois, the writers closely examined in this study—Jean Toomer, Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes and Albert Murray—have advanced cosmopolitanism to meet its own theoretical principals in the contested arena of racial discourse while remaining integral figures in a larger tradition of cosmopolitan thought. Rather than become mired in fixed categorical distinctions, their cosmopolitan perspective values the pluralist belief in the distinctiveness of different cultural groups while allowing for the possibility of inter-ethnic subjectivities, intercultural affiliations and change in any given mode of identification. This study advances cosmopolitanism as a useful model for like-minded critics and intellectuals today who struggle with contemporary debates regarding multiculturalism and universalism in a rapidly, yet unevenly, globalizing world.
Download or read book Say It Loud! written by Randall Kennedy and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2023-10-17 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A collection of provocative essays exploring the key social justice issues of our time—from George Floyd to antiracism to inequality and the Supreme Court. Kennedy is "among the most incisive American commentators on race" (The New York Times). Informed by sharpness of observation and often courting controversy, deep fellow feeling, decency, and wit, Say It Loud! includes: The George Floyd Moment: Promise and Peril • Isabel Wilkerson, the Election of 2020, and Racial Caste • The Princeton Ultimatum: Antiracism Gone Awry • The Constitutional Roots of “Birtherism” • Inequality and the Supreme Court • “Nigger”: The Strange Career Continues • Frederick Douglass: Everyone’s Hero • Remembering Thurgood Marshall • Why Clarence Thomas Ought to Be Ostracized • The Politics of Black Respectability • Policing Racial Solidarity In each essay, Kennedy is mindful of complexity, ambivalence, and paradox, and he is always stirring and enlightening. Say It Loud! is a wide-ranging summa of Randall Kennedy’s thought on the realities and imaginaries of race in America.
Book Synopsis Encyclopedia of African-American Literature by : Wilfred D. Samuels
Download or read book Encyclopedia of African-American Literature written by Wilfred D. Samuels and published by Infobase Learning. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 1999 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a reference on African American literature providing profiles of notable and little-known writers and their works, literary forms and genres, critics and scholars, themes and terminology and more.
Book Synopsis American Tricksters by : William J. Jackson
Download or read book American Tricksters written by William J. Jackson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tricksters are known by their deeds. Obviously not all the examples in American Tricksters are full-blown mythological tricksters like Coyote, Raven, or the Two Brothers found in Native American stories, or superhuman figures like the larger-than-life Davy Crockett of nineteenth-century tales. Newer expressions of trickiness do share some qualities with the Trickster archetype seen in myths. Rock stars who break taboos and get away with it, heroes who overcome monstrous circumstances, crafty folk who find a way to survive and thrive when the odds are against them, men making spectacles of themselves by feeding their astounding appetites in public--all have some trickster qualities. Each person, every living creature who ever faced an obstacle and needed to get around it, has found the built-in trickster impulse. Impasses turn the trickster gene on, or stimulate the trick-performing imagination--that's life. To explore the ways and means of trickster maneuvers can alert us to pitfalls, help us appreciate tricks that are entertaining, and aid us in fending off ploys which drain our resources and ruin our lives. Knowing more about the Trickster archetype in our psyches helps us be more self-aware.
Book Synopsis Shadowing Ralph Ellison by : John S. Wright
Download or read book Shadowing Ralph Ellison written by John S. Wright and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2009-09-18 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1952, Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) published his novel Invisible Man, which transformed the dynamics of American literature. The novel won the National Book Award, extended the themes of his early short stories, and dramatized in fictional form the cultural theories expressed in his later essay collections Shadow & Act and Going to the Territory. In Shadowing Ralph Ellison, John Wright traces Ellison's intellectual and aesthetic development and the evolution of his cultural philosophy throughout his long career. The book explores Ellison's published fiction, his criticism and correspondence, and his passionate exchanges with—and impact on—other literary intellectuals during the Cold War 1950s and during the culture wars of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Wright examines Ellison's body of work through the lens of Ellison's cosmopolitan philosophy of art and culture, which the writer began to construct during the late 1930s. Ellison, Wright argues, eschewed orthodoxy in both political and cultural discourse, maintaining that to achieve the highest cultural awareness and the greatest personal integrity, the individual must cultivate forms of thinking and acting that are fluid, improvisational, and vitalistic—like the blues and jazz. Accordingly, Ellison elaborated throughout his body of work the innumerable ways that rigid cultural labels, categories, and concepts—from racial stereotypes and fashionable academic theories to conventional political doctrines—fail to capture the full potential of human consciousness. Instead, Ellison advocated forms of consciousness and culture akin to what the blues and jazz reveal, and he portrayed those musical traditions as the best embodiment of the evolving American spirit.
Book Synopsis Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope by : Lucas E. Morel
Download or read book Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope written by Lucas E. Morel and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This superb [essay] collection enables readers of Invisible Man to appreciate the subtleties of its cultural and political commentary.” —Journal of American Studies An important collection of original essays that examine how Ellison’s landmark novel, Invisible Man (1952), addresses the social, cultural, political, economic, and racial contradictions of America. Commenting on the significance of Mark Twain’s writings, Ralph Ellison wrote that “a novel could be fashioned as a raft of hope, perception and entertainment that might help keep us afloat as we tried to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation’s vacillating course toward and away from the democratic ideal.” Ellison believed it was the contradiction between America’s “noble ideals and the actualities of our conduct” that inspired the most profound literature?”the American novel at its best.” Drawing from the fields of literature, politics, law, and history, the contributors make visible the political and ethical terms of Invisible Man , while also illuminating Ellison’s understanding of democracy and art. Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope uniquely demonstrates why Invisible Man stands as a premier literary meditation on American democracy. “Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding Ellison’s political thought.” —Lawrence Jackson, author of Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius “Outstanding. . . . Provides an interdisciplinary perspective of the politics of the book.” —Lexington Herald-Leader “These essays . . . demonstrate that a great work of art has the capacity to renew itself across generations.” —Pamela K. Jensen, Kenyon College “This careful study of Ellison’s great novel is highly recommended for all serious students of American and African American literature.” —African American Review
Book Synopsis Murray Talks Music by : Albert Murray
Download or read book Murray Talks Music written by Albert Murray and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2016-05-16 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year 2016 will mark the centennial of the birth of Albert Murray (1916–2013), who in thirteen books was by turns a lyrical novelist, a keen and iconoclastic social critic, and a formidable interpreter of jazz and blues. Not only did his prizewinning study Stomping the Blues (1976) influence musicians far and wide, it was also a foundational text for Jazz at Lincoln Center, which he cofounded with Wynton Marsalis and others in 1987. Murray Talks Music brings together, for the first time, many of Murray’s finest interviews and essays on music—most never before published—as well as rare liner notes and prefaces. For those new to Murray, this book will be a perfect introduction, and those familiar with his work—even scholars—will be surprised, dazzled, and delighted. Highlights include Dizzy Gillespie’s richly substantive 1985 conversation; an in-depth 1994 dialogue on jazz and culture between Murray and Wynton Marsalis; and a long 1989 discussion on Duke Ellington between Murray, Stanley Crouch, and Loren Schoenberg. Also interviewed by Murray are producer and impresario John Hammond and singer and bandleader Billy Eckstine. All of thse conversations were previously lost to history. A celebrated educator and raconteur, Murray engages with a variety of scholars and journalists while making insightful connections among music, literature, and other art forms—all with ample humor and from unforeseen angles. Leading Murray scholar Paul Devlin contextualizes the essays and interviews in an extensive introduction, which doubles as a major commentary on Murray’s life and work. The volume also presents sixteen never-before-seen photographs of jazz greats taken by Murray. No jazz collection will be complete without Murray Talks Music, which includes a foreword by Gary Giddins and an afterword by Greg Thomas.
Book Synopsis Beyond A Love Supreme by : Tony Whyton
Download or read book Beyond A Love Supreme written by Tony Whyton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Coltrane's A Love Supreme is widely considered one of the greatest jazz albums of all time. In Beyond A Love Supreme, author Tony Whyton explores both the musical aspects of A Love Supreme, and the album's seminal importance in jazz history, as well as its broader musical and cultural impact.
Book Synopsis Embodiment and the New Shape of Black Theological Thought by : Anthony B. Pinn
Download or read book Embodiment and the New Shape of Black Theological Thought written by Anthony B. Pinn and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black theology tends to be a theology about no-body. Though one might assume that black and womanist theology have already given significant attention to the nature and meaning of black bodies as a theological issue, this inquiry has primarily taken the form of a focus on issues relating to liberation, treating the body in abstract terms rather than focusing on the experiencing of a material, fleshy reality. By focusing on the body as a physical entity and not just a metaphorical one, Pinn offers a new approach to theological thinking about race, gender, and sexuality. According to Pinn, the body is of profound theological importance. In this first text on black theology to take embodiment as its starting point and its goal, Pinn interrogates the traditional source materials for black theology, such as spirituals and slave narratives, seeking to link them to materials such as photography that highlight the theological importance of the body. Employing a multidisciplinary approach spanning from the sociology of the body and philosophy to anthropology and art history, Embodiment and the New Shape of Black Theological Thought pushes black theology to the next level.
Download or read book Rifftide written by Papa Jo Jones and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life and times of Papa Jo Jones, gifted raconteur and one of the greatest drummers in the history of jazz
Download or read book The Magic Keys written by Albert Murray and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Magic Keys winningly evokes the coming to maturity of one of the great characters in contemporary American literature: Scooter, the central protagonist of Albert Murray’ s highly acclaimed autobiographical novels Train Whistle Guitar, The Spyglass Tree, and The Seven League Boots. Growing up brilliant and curious in Alabama, Scooter was told he was destined for greatness. Now newly married and a graduate student in humanities at New York University, he goes about discovering just what he is destined to be great at. Anchored by Eunice, his “Mrs. Me,” Scooter makes the rounds of Manhattan’ s libraries, jazz hangouts, galleries, skyscrapers, and endlessly fascinating streets, meeting the people who will help him find his way: dapper Taft Edison, who is setting their down-home dialect onto the pages of his novel-in-progress; Joe States, a drummer who brings old expectations to Scooter’s new life; and Jewel Templeton, no longer his girl but still a believer. When his budding career takes him back to Alabama, Scooter discovers both the promise of everyday bliss and intimations of adventures to come. In his inimitably musical, ardent prose, Murray captures the joyful rhythms of youth and the pulse of life at the moment when everything seems possible, in an exhilarating, tender, and masterfully crafted novel.
Book Synopsis Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation by : Barbara A. Baker
Download or read book Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation written by Barbara A. Baker and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2010-06-29 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book-length study of the writings, work, and life of Renaissance man and Alabama native Albert Murray. The collection consists of essays and interviews written by prominent scholars of African American literature, jazz, and Albert Murray that illustrate Murray's place as a central figure in African American arts and letters and as an American cultural pioneer. Book jacket.
Book Synopsis Essay and General Literature Index by : Minnie Earl Sears
Download or read book Essay and General Literature Index written by Minnie Earl Sears and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes "List of books indexed" (published also separately).
Book Synopsis Southern Writers by : Joseph M. Flora
Download or read book Southern Writers written by Joseph M. Flora and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2006-06-21 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of Southern Writers assumes its distinguished predecessor's place as the essential reference on literary artists of the American South. Broadly expanded and thoroughly revised, it boasts 604 entries-nearly double the earlier edition's-written by 264 scholars. For every figure major and minor, from the venerable and canonical to the fresh and innovative, a biographical sketch and chronological list of published works provide comprehensive, concise, up-to-date information. Here in one convenient source are the South's novelists and short story writers, poets and dramatists, memoirists and essayists, journalists, scholars, and biographers from the colonial period to the twenty-first century. What constitutes a "southern writer" is always a matter for debate. Editors Joseph M. Flora and Amber Vogel have used a generous definition that turns on having a significant connection to the region, in either a personal or literary sense. New to this volume are younger writers who have emerged in the quarter century since the dictionary's original publication, as well as older talents previously unknown or unacknowledged. For almost every writer found in the previous edition, a new biography has been commissioned. Drawn from the very best minds on southern literature and covering the full spectrum of its practitioners, Southern Writers is an indispensable reference book for anyone intrigued by the subject.
