Django, Django, Django

At this point, I care not whether you agree or disagree, are on #teamSpike or #teamTarantino, I'm just pleased slave narrative is getting so much press.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

If you seriously have not had enough of this topic I implore you to read the following perspectives from the Jack and Jill Politics Community:

Most importantly, listen live tonight at 8pPT/11pET to
when
, discussing, what else, but Django?

At this point, I care not whether you agree or disagree, are on #teamSpike or #teamTarantino, I'm just pleased slave narrative is getting so much press. There are many, many well written and historical accounts of authentic slave life, (since that seem to be what everyone is clamoring for). Each and every one of them would make for fantastic films. "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Ann Jacobs has long been a favorite read of mine.

A big budget Hollywood film about slavery from the vantage point of a woman who had vastly different experiences from the men is long overdue. As Django proves, It doesn't have to be a historical non-fiction to make a strong screen play. Toni Morrison's "A Mercy" would make for a tremendous film about how the color lines were first drawn in colonial America. The perspective of Native America, African and European slave women are all presented as are the desperate choices women were forced to make to stay alive.

"Up from Slavery" by Booker T. Washington is incredibly relevant in modern America, where black men are now relegated to roles as prison inmates, gangsters, basketball players, deadbeat fathers and rappers if not a combination of all of the above. This man escapes slavery, works his entire way through his education to become one of America's first (public) Negro advisers to the White House and in his spare time founds an institution known as Tuskegee, education millions more negro men and women as they unraveled the genetic devastation the 'peculiar institution' left in its wake.

Lawrence Otis Grahams' "The Senator and The Socialite" as a film could center on the life of Blanche K. Bruce the first African-American and the only former slave to ever preside over the Senate.

Whatever your beef is with Django, or even if you liked it and want more, it's a certainty there is book somewhere containing what you're looking for.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot