Black Literature

Learning to Evade the "Black Tax" on Our Stories

Leonce Gaiter | Posted 11.07.2011

Read More: African-American Literature, Black History, African-American History, African-Americans, African-American Issues, African American Fiction, African American Literature, Black Literature, Writing Black History, Black Voices News
Leonce Gaiter

It appears that shame -- black and white -- can shrink us. In literature we've been historically reduced to a slither of a people. Writers like me self-censor for fear of offending, for fear of not finding an audience. We don't tell our stories in the context of this nation.

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What Happened to the Black Literary Canon?

Pascal Robert | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Black Literature, Black-Literature, African-American History, Black Literary Canon, President Barack Obama, African Americans, African-American Issues, Books, Reading, Books News
Pascal Robert

How can we expect the young bright minds in the black community offers to combat these ever increasing racial realities if the intellectual arsenal of books and authors that were once heralded as crucial to ones personal edification become relics?

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Rejecting the Publishing Ghetto

Leonce Gaiter | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Literature, African-American, African-American Literature, Book Publishing, Publishing, Publishers Weekly, Books, Black Literature, American Literature, Media News
Leonce Gaiter

Today, there is a publishing ghetto. Mainstream white-owned houses have black imprints. Here, they publish books by, for and about black people.

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If He Hollers: Remembering Chester Himes

John Ridley | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Literature, Himes, James Baldwin, Harlem Cycle, Black Literature, Run Man Run, The Harlem Cycle, Chester Himes, Entertainment News
John Ridley

The jacket copy for Chester Himes' Run Man Run reads: "Lush sex and stark violence colored black and served up raw by a great Negro writer." This is pretty much a micro-summary of Himes's work.

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