Tangled Up in Dark
In class yesterday, a perplexed student asked if Daniel Sullivan, a central character in Larry Duplechan’s Tangled Up in Blue, was Black....
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KG1
Mar 21, 20212 min
Life, Music, and the Universe
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...
KG1
Feb 22, 20213 min
Doses
“Junior Boyd, I’m a little surprised at you on this vaccine situation.” Semple paused as he thought the call was dropping, but the...
KG1
Jan 10, 20214 min
Revolutionary Acts of Language
In 1986, approximately a decade before her death, Toni Cade Bambara declared at the National Black Writers Conference that African...
KG1
Dec 21, 20203 min
Black American Sign Language
In a sociolinguistics class back in graduate school, Professor Roger Cayer told us about an article by James Woodward titled “Black...
KG1
Dec 15, 20203 min
Dr. Dr.
Semple addressed the man sitting on the park bench in weather too chilly for deep contemplation. “You look a little depressed, Junior...
KG1
Dec 3, 20203 min
“Defund the Police”
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...
KG1
Nov 6, 20202 min
Winning Michigan
Winning is one of those funny words that people use when they mean another word. I mostly noticed this in connection with sports events....
KG1
Nov 1, 20203 min
Rhetoric Lessons in Street Fiction
“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...
KG1
Oct 12, 20203 min
The New Thing
“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...
KG1
Oct 4, 20204 min
From Langston Hughes to Muhammad Ali to Black Arts
Only on rereading Langston Hughes’s The Big Sea for my course on African American Autobiography did I ponder name and geography...
KG1
Sep 26, 20203 min
Composition and Satchel Paige
Once I was at a composition conference headquartered in downtown Nashville. Some colleagues and I, having never seen Fisk University,...
KG1
Sep 26, 20204 min
BIPOC
In the club of ethnic labeling, BIPOC tryna get it in. The term Black, Indigenous and People of Color is a well-meaning attempt in...
KG1
Sep 15, 20205 min
For Charles Rudolph Scott
I missed a good speech on September 15, 1970. The person that gave it, Chuck Scott, as we knew him, was a childhood friend, my next-door...
KG1
Sep 1, 20202 min
White Nationalism and Trump
It is fairly easy to see that white nationalism is largely an expression of fascist impulses. It would be hard not to when...
KG1
Aug 27, 20202 min
Poetry and Rhetoric
The virtuoso poet Audre Lorde opened her popular poem “Power” with the following lines: The difference between poetry and rhetoric is...
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