Author: Harmony HolidayPublisher:
ISBN: 9780991429899
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 60
Book Description
A Jazz Funeral for Uncle Tom
Author: Harmony HolidayPublisher:
ISBN: 9780991429899
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 60
Book Description
Uncle
Author: Cheryl ThompsonPublisher: Coach House Books
ISBN: 1770566317
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
From martyr to insult, how “Uncle Tom” has influenced two centuries of racial politics. Jackie Robinson, President Barack Obama, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, O.J. Simpson and Christopher Darden have all been accused of being an Uncle Tom during their careers. How, why, and with what consequences for our society did Uncle Tom morph first into a servile old man and then to a racial epithet hurled at African American men deemed, by other Black people, to have betrayed their race? Uncle Tom, the eponymous figure in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sentimental anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was a loyal Christian who died a martyr’s death. But soon after the best-selling novel appeared, theatre troupes across North America and Europe transformed Stowe’s story into minstrel shows featuring white men in blackface. In Uncle, Cheryl Thompson traces Tom’s journey from literary character to racial trope. She explores how Uncle Tom came to be and exposes the relentless reworking of Uncle Tom into a nostalgic, racial metaphor with the power to shape how we see Black men, a distortion visible in everything from Uncle Ben and Rastus The Cream of Wheat chef to Shirley Temple and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson to Bill Cosby. In Donald Trump’s post-truth America, where nostalgia is used as a political tool to rewrite history, Uncle makes the case for why understanding the production of racial stereotypes matters more than ever before.
Robert Johnson's Freewheeling Jazz Funeral
Author: Whit FrazierPublisher: The Multicanon Media Company, LLC
ISBN: 1737214938
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Book Description
During the heady days of the 2008 election cycle, playwright Rudy Paschal struggles to create a new theater that reflects a contemporary Black aesthetic using the iconic figure of Robert Johnson and the last days of his life. His girlfriend, Janet, a white feminist literary theorist at NYU, is at work on a book herself attempting to find peace between third wave feminism and womanism. The political and cultural differences dividing the two leads to a strain in the relationship which leads both characters to re-examine their core values.
BAX 2020
Author: Seth AbramsonPublisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819579599
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 481
Book Description
Best American Experimental Writing 2020, guest-edited by Joyelle McSweeney and Carmen Maria Machado, is the sixth edition of the critically acclaimed anthology series compiling an exciting mix of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and genre-defying work. Featuring a diverse roster of writers and artists culled from both established authors—including Anne Boyer and Alice Notley—as well as new and unexpected voices, like Kamden Hilliard and Kanika Agrawal, BAX 2020 presents an expansive view of today's experimental and high-energy writing practices. A perfect gift for discerning readers as well as an important classroom tool, Best American Experimental Writing 2020 is a vital addition to the American literary landscape.
A Memorial to Uncle Tom
Author: Leaning on the Rock
Author: Denise G. LabordePublisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1450251943
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 182
Book Description
In LEANING ON THE ROCK, motivational humorist Denise Laborde shares an uplifting, candid, and amusing compilation of personal anecdotes and accompanying scripture that illustrate how God has helped her achieve a fulfilling life, ultimately enabling others to view themselves as victorious overcomers rather than perpetual victims. As Laborde offers a poignant, faith-filled glimpse into the joys and sorrows of her journey through life, she illustrates how she found comfort and guidance in the Bible and through prayer, despite facing seemingly insurmountable challenges following the birth of two children with cerebral palsy, her fathers sudden blindness, a divorce after more than twenty years of marriage, and bankruptcy. Instead of falling into a bitter, deep despair, she details how each event instead deepened her faith in the God who had become her constant ally, steady companion, and the never-ending source of daily strength. For anyone desiring peace, joy, and contentment, Labordes experiences offer methods on how to choose Gods will in order to move forward, regain hope, and achieve a gratifying life. Let him rely on, trust in, and be confident in the name of the Lord, and let him lean upon and be supported by his God. Isaiah 50:10 (Amplified Bible)
Jazz Religion, the Second Line, and Black New Orleans
Author: Richard Brent TurnerPublisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253025125
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
This scholarly study demonstrates “that while post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans is changing, the vibrant traditions of jazz . . . must continue” (Journal of African American History). An examination of the musical, religious, and political landscape of black New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina, this revised edition looks at how these factors play out in a new millennium of global apartheid. Richard Brent Turner explores the history and contemporary significance of second lines—the group of dancers who follow the first procession of church and club members, brass bands, and grand marshals in black New Orleans’s jazz street parades. Here music and religion interplay, and Turner’s study reveals how these identities and traditions from Haiti and West and Central Africa are reinterpreted. He also describes how second line participants create their own social space and become proficient in the arts of political disguise, resistance, and performance.
The Cultural Career of Coolness
Author: Ulla HaselsteinPublisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739173170
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295
Book Description
Cool is a word of American English that has been integrated into the vocabulary of numerous languages around the globe. Today it is a term most often used in advertising trendy commodities, or, more generally, in promoting urban lifestyles in our postmodern age. But what is the history of the term “cool?" When has coolness come to be associated with certain modes of contemporary self-fashioning? On what grounds do certain nations claim a privilege to be recognized as “cool?" These are some of the questions that served as a starting-point for a comparative cultural inquiry which brought together specialists from American Studies and Japanese Studies, but also from Classics, Philosophy and Sociology. The conceptual grid of the volume can be described as follows: (1) Coolness is a metaphorical term for affect-control. It is tied in with cultural discourses on the emotions and the norms of their public display, and with gendered cultural practices of subjectivity. (2) In the course of the cultural transformations of modernity, the term acquired new importance as a concept referring to practices of individual, ethnic, and national difference. (3) Depending on cultural context, coolness is defined in terms of aesthetic detachment and self-irony, of withdrawal, dissidence and even latent rebellion. (4) Coolness often carries undertones of ambivalence. The situational adequacy of cool behavior becomes an issue for contending ethical and aesthetic discourses since an ethical ideal of self-control and a strategy of performing self-control are inextricably intertwined. (5) In literature and film, coolness as a character trait is portrayed as a personal strength, as a lack of emotion, as an effect of trauma, as a mask for suffering or rage, as precious behavior, or as savvyness. This wide spectrum is significant: artistic productions offer valid insights into contradictions of cultural discourses on affect-control. (6) American and Japanese cultural productions show that twentieth-century notions of coolness hybridize different cultural traditions of affect-control.
The Cemeteries of New Orleans
Author: Peter B. DedekPublisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807166111
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 277
Book Description
In The Cemeteries of New Orleans, Peter B. Dedek reveals the origins and evolution of the Crescent City’s world-famous necropolises, exploring both their distinctive architecture and their cultural impact. Spanning centuries, this fascinating body of research takes readers from muddy fields of crude burial markers to extravagantly designed cities of the dead, illuminating a vital and vulnerable piece of New Orleans’s identity. Where many histories of New Orleans cemeteries have revolved around the famous people buried within them, Dedek focuses on the marble cutters, burial society members, journalists, and tourists who shaped these graveyards into internationally recognizable emblems of the city. In addition to these cultural actors, Dedek’s exploration of cemetery architecture reveals the impact of ancient and medieval grave traditions and styles, the city’s geography, and the arrival of trained European tomb designers, such as the French architect J. N. B. de Pouilly in 1833 and Italian artist and architect Pietro Gualdi in 1851. As Dedek shows, the nineteenth century was a particularly critical era in the city’s cemetery design. Notably, the cemeteries embodied traditional French and Spanish precedents, until the first garden cemetery—the Metairie Cemetery—was built on the site of an old racetrack in 1872. Like the older walled cemeteries, this iconic venue served as a lavish expression of fraternal and ethnic unity, a backdrop to exuberant social celebrations, and a destination for sightseeing excursions. During this time, cultural and religious practices, such as the celebration of All Saints’ Day and the practice of Voodoo rituals, flourished within the spatial bounds of these resting places. Over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, however, episodes of neglect and destruction gave rise to groups that aimed to preserve the historic cemeteries of New Orleans—an endeavor, which, according to Dedek, is still wanting for resources and political will. Containing ample primary source material, abundant illustrations, appendices on both tomb styles and the history of each of the city’s eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cemeteries, The Cemeteries of New Orleans offers a comprehensive and intriguing resource on these fascinating historic sites.
Jazz in New Orleans
Author: Charles SuhorPublisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 1461660025
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 382
Book Description
Jazz in New Orleans provides accurate information about, and an insightful interpretation of, jazz in New Orleans from the end of World War II through 1970. Suhor, relying on his experiences as a listener, a working jazz drummer, and writer in New Orleans during this period, has done a great service to lovers of New Orleans music by filling in some gaping holes in postwar jazz history and cutting through many of the myths and misconceptions that have taken hold over the years. Skillfully combining his personal experiences and historical research, the author writes with both authority and immediacy. The text, rich in previously unpublished anecdotes and New Orleans lore, is divided into three sections, each with an overview essay followed by pertinent articles Suhor wrote for national and local journals—including Down Beat and New Orleans Magazine. Section One, "Jazz and the Establishment," focuses on cultural and institutional settings in which jazz was first battered, then nurtured. It deals with the reluctance of power brokers and the custodians of culture in New Orleans to accept jazz as art until the music proved itself elsewhere and was easily recognizable as a marketable commodity. Section Two, "Traditional and Dixieland Jazz," highlights the music and the musicians who were central to early jazz styles in New Orleans between 1947 and 1953. Section Three, "An Invisible Generation," will help dispel the stubborn myth that almost no one was playing be-bop or other modern jazz styles in New Orleans before the current generation of young artists appeared in the 1980s.