The Language Lane

Reflecting on the World Athletics Championships recently concluded in Budapest, I find that I enjoyed a few of the language performances...

I have been off the block too long. I admit to being confused when I saw that the boxer Shakur Stevenson called out fellow boxer Vasiliy...

The fuss fading over the Brawl in Montgomery. The rap song been made by Gmac Cash. Jokes told. Names handed out to the Alabama Avengers...

Today, Chris Wallace reminded me why, besides the Trump fetish they pretend not to have, I watch CNN less and less these days. While...

After Cornel West announced his quest to run for president as the Green Party nominee, he mentioned in several interviews the idea of...

Eugenia Rho and her research colleagues have demonstrated in a recent study that the verbal approach of officers during vehicle stops of...

At times, you have been asked which prior literary scene you would want to visit. Some expect you to say the Harlem Renaissance, a...

Back in 1974, May 23 to be exact, I translated Pablo Neruda’s “Bruselas,” or “Brussels.” Of all that I’ve done, of all that I’ve lost, Of...

If you wait twenty years for something, you figure the payoff should be special. It is indeed if you read Maryemma Graham’s massive...

Some of My Favorite CCCC 2023 Moments that Ain’t Got Nothing to Do with the Formal Program 1.) When members of the Black Caucus...

During the first two years of the pandemic, my partner, Michael, and I were accorded the safety of working from home. Haphazardly, we...

A while back I received in the mail an envelope containing a short newspaper article about Ann Petry accompanied by a handwritten note....

The borough of Queens usually has been an afterthought, if that, in conversations about Black authors and sites of Black literary...

“I have not seen you in a few days, Semple.” “Been holed up at my nephew’s apartment,” replied Semple as he slid into a familiar seat at...

On the anniversary of the beginning of Kristallnacht, the anti-Jewish rampage in the Third Reich from November 9-10, 1938, which left...

America’s favorite word echoed throughout the hallowed Ethel Barrymore Theatre this past weekend during the performance of August...

We are not ones to hold grudges. We have always sided with Antigone on such matters. In that spirit, we inaugurate the Ashli Babbit Award...

Supreme Team, the limited series directed by Nas and Peter Scalettar for Showtime, is mostly a strange effort. Fascination with the...

On the seventy-seventh anniversary of his birth, I recall the stunning epic poem, Jazz in Jail, by Louis Reyes Rivera. Robin Kelley...

Over his entire career, poet Quincy Troupe has expressed fascination with the idea of creation and the life cycle. His first volume,...