The Language Lane

Semple was perplexed as he sat on Boyd’s sofa engaged in the news streaming from the flat screen on the wall. He had not tried to focus...

After a wait of more than three decades, we have a new installment of Ishmael Reed’s The Terribles. Long intended to be a trilogy, if my...

Junior Boyd approached Semple, sitting in a familiar spot on the park bench, with excitement, “I just heard that the Cleveland Indians...

“Perhaps the black intellectual we still have the most to learn from is David Walker.” This perhaps is the pivotal statement in Jesse...

Next month, Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins, will release The Minister Primarily, a novel by John Oliver Killens. The manuscript...

“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...

Every knowledgeable boxing fan has Sugar Ray Robinson rated among the top 5 boxers who ever competed. Many consider him, pound for pound,...

My introduction to the energetic, charismatic wordsmith DMX was in the winter of 1998. I, like many others, became familiar with him from...

Frank Money, despite his name, contends with more misfortune than any of Toni Morrison’s major male characters. There is the KKK-style...

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...

In class yesterday, a perplexed student asked if Daniel Sullivan, a central character in Larry Duplechan’s Tangled Up in Blue, was Black....

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...

“Junior Boyd, I’m a little surprised at you on this vaccine situation.” Semple paused as he thought the call was dropping, but the...

In 1986, approximately a decade before her death, Toni Cade Bambara declared at the National Black Writers Conference that African...

In a sociolinguistics class back in graduate school, Professor Roger Cayer told us about an article by James Woodward titled “Black...

Semple addressed the man sitting on the park bench in weather too chilly for deep contemplation. “You look a little depressed, Junior...

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...

Winning is one of those funny words that people use when they mean another word. I mostly noticed this in connection with sports events....

“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...

“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...