The Language Lane

“Wait, Junior Boyd. You’re fading out. You must be moving around. Oh, that’s better. Watch the playoff game with y’all? That’s kinda cool. Everybody needled up. But I don’t know what I’m looking at anymore. I can’t keep score.” “I don’t understand, Semple.” “Well, I’m watching the game the other night and the guy scores 40 points. Great game. Then it got greater. He had 15 assists and the announcer said he was responsible for 70 of the team’s 100 points. But I saw a teammate

Every knowledgeable boxing fan has Sugar Ray Robinson rated among the top 5 boxers who ever competed. Many consider him, pound for pound, to have been the best, having possessed an unmatched blend of speed, power, skill, and style. The outlines of his biography are familiar: Born Walker Smith, Jr. in Georgia, taken by his mother to Detroit while he was a child, on to New York by the time he was a teenager, acquired the name Ray Robinson after borrowing a card to participate i

My introduction to the energetic, charismatic wordsmith DMX was in the winter of 1998. I, like many others, became familiar with him from his verse on the now infamous LL Cool J song “4,3,2,1,” which featured him and other artists including Method Man, Redman, and a then-unknown Canibus. Following that song, I would be introduced to one of my favorite mixtapes of all time, Canibus vs DMX. In many ways, DMX captured the complexity of urban street culture, and he did so with w

Frank Money, despite his name, contends with more misfortune than any of Toni Morrison’s major male characters. There is the KKK-style barbarism to flee from in Texas, the vicious White supremacy in Georgia, and the savagery of the Korean War. But Frank, like Sethe in Beloved, is haunted by his own murderous action. His mental stability can be conveniently understood as post-traumatic stress disorder, but his condition is shaped at least as much by shame and guilt connected t

They say numbers speak to you sometimes. Maybe they say buy a lottery ticket. It could be that simple, as it is with me and 306. That is the first address I remember on that street uptown back in the day. My sister remembers the rat trapped in the radio. You’ll have to ask her about that. I can tell you that the address doesn’t exist anymore. The building was razed, and condominiums were constructed with the entrance on Bradhurst Avenue. I don’t think about the new number. I

In class yesterday, a perplexed student asked if Daniel Sullivan, a central character in Larry Duplechan’s Tangled Up in Blue, was Black. She understood that he was described as a double for Superman. People would approach him in public thinking that he could be Christopher Reeve. But the student didn’t know who Reeve was. Her first impulse, given that we are in the middle of an African American literature course, was to express wonder that a Black man had played Superman in

When you reach for the new poetry volume by Ishmael Reed, you just wonder which varieties of wit will be on display. What is the poet who penned the iconic and box-defying “I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra” fifty years ago and published a collected volume of verse spanning 42 years (1964-2006) possibly up to now? Turns out to be a lot. Remaining contemporary and astute, Reed simply is not going away, as indicated in the extended comparison, “Hip Hop and The Blues,” The Blues w

As a kid, one of my favorite movies was the 1989 boxing documentary Champions Forever. According to my parents, by the time I was about three or four I could quote the entire movie word for word. I decided to watch the doc over this past weekend. The film is mostly 80 minutes of hero worship for Muhammad Ali, but that’s not all that it is. The documentary does include some general background on the careers of a handful of other former heavyweight champions: Larry Holmes, Ken

“Junior Boyd, I’m a little surprised at you on this vaccine situation.” Semple paused as he thought the call was dropping, but the connection held. “You know I got my second dose this morning and you still saying you ain’t down.” “That was not my precise messaging,” replied Junior Boyd. “I expressed that I was concerned. I wish I had more thorough analytical historically-informed information.” “You might become history while you waiting on that info. They done analyzed this v

Because he didn’t have speed and didn’t pinpoint well---touching the wrong letter a lot---Semple refrained from texting when he could get away with it. But Boyd had not fully recovered, so this was the best choice. He had to type carefully, though, to avoid becoming frustrated: Yeah, I’m out here. Wasn’t thinking much about the inauguration and the poetry. U know I don’t be into it like that anymore. The young sista was good, though, like u say. Delivery was good. Message was

On the occasion of my ENGLISH 467 class discussing Richard Wright’s classic novel, I post this review of the most recent film version. The review first appeared in Tribes. Review This is not your Richard Wright’s Native Son. In a sampling and remix world, director Rashid Johnson and screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks jacked the novel for some beats to spin out an HBO special. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. You take great, ready-made source material whenever you can find it. G

In 1986, approximately a decade before her death, Toni Cade Bambara declared at the National Black Writers Conference that African American writers are responsible for reminding people what they were pretending not to know. Her faith in archives that we can draw on, and her essential contribution to such archives, are central concerns in Thabiti Lewis’s compelling new book, a cultural biography titled Black People Are My Business: Toni Cade Bambara’s Practices of Liberation.

In a sociolinguistics class back in graduate school, Professor Roger Cayer told us about an article by James Woodward titled “Black Southern Signing.” I was fascinated that such a linguistic form existed, but I was more interested in the idea that those language practitioners were considered inferior and were discriminated against in schools. This boosted an argument about African American English (AAE) that I supported by then: It’s not verbal forms or sounds that make you c

Semple addressed the man sitting on the park bench in weather too chilly for deep contemplation. “You look a little depressed, Junior Boyd. I know your favorite lunch spot is shut down again. But we haven’t been going there much anyway.” “It’s not the restaurant, Semple. People are saying they shouldn’t call my wife Dr. anymore because she possesses a doctorate in education not a medical degree. They say she’s just like the new First Lady. They shouldn’t call her Dr., and the

Cold wind whipped across the masks of the two men as they passed the police station out on the boulevard. “They delved into that topic again last night on CNN. Defund the police,” said Junior Boyd, gesturing toward the building. “Came on late.” “I was knocked out by then,” replied Semple Jenkins. “Don’t defund sleep.” “I suppose we would not want that,” chuckled Junior Boyd. “But seriously, they really got into it. It started with Obama. Peter Hambry, from Good Luck America,

Taught by Women: Poems as Resistance Language, New and Selected is a love letter, a Black valentine, by Haki R. Madhubuti to women of all stripes who have contributed positively to the social being that he is. If his emotional capacity is vibrant, they primarily shaped it. If his understanding is now vast, they are largely responsible. Haki’s appreciation takes the form of a captivating volume of poetry and prose that makes his adoration plain and displays his tribute as beau

Winning is one of those funny words that people use when they mean another word. I mostly noticed this in connection with sports events. Someone would say a person or some team was winning after three quarters, after being up a set, or after having won more games in a series. But if winning means relating to or resulting in victory, then winning can only be ascertained after victory is assured. A winning strategy is only one that results in a win. Similarly, we don’t know if

“Well, in being a virtuous leader, that’s where your ability to use the third liberal art of rhetoric comes into play. You must be a good negotiator and motivational speaker, make them see and want to for whatever acceptable reasons inspire them.” “I don’t understand. What’s rhetoric?” “It’s the art of using words effectively and persuasively. It is one of the seven liberal arts taught by the ancient Egyptians to their students. The others are grammar, arithmetic, dialectic,

“What’s up, Semple Jenkins. You’re moving pretty fast out here.” “Tryna get home with this stationery to finish this letter to my folks down South. I thought it would only take a few minutes, but my godson decided to help me. He from college like you. So I ran out of paper.” Semple extended his right hand to display the plastic bag from the drugstore containing a writing pad, some new pens, and a variety of candy. “I’m not sure I get the connection,” said Junior Boyd. “Do you

Only on rereading Langston Hughes’s The Big Sea for my course on African American Autobiography did I ponder name and geography connections. Hughes identifies his paternal great-grandfather as Sam Clay, a white man who lived in Henry County, Kentucky. Sam Clay, Hughes suggests, was a relative of Henry Clay, who was a Senator, Secretary of State, and several times a candidate for President. On this reading, Clay in combination with Kentucky made me think of another famous Clay