Losing My Cool: Love, Literature, and a Black Man’s Escape from the Crowd

Author by : Thomas Chatterton Williams
Languange Used : en
Release Date : 2010-04-29
Publisher by : Penguin

ISBN :

Description : A pitch-perfect account of how hip-hop culture drew in the author and how his father drew him out again-with love, perseverance, and fifteen thousand books. Into Williams's childhood home-a one-story ranch house-his father crammed more books than the local library could hold. "Pappy" used some of these volumes to run an academic prep service; the rest he used in his unending pursuit of wisdom. His son's pursuits were quite different-"money, hoes, and clothes." The teenage Williams wore Medusa- faced Versace sunglasses and a hefty gold medallion, dumbed down and thugged up his speech, and did whatever else he could to fit into the intoxicating hip-hop culture that surrounded him. Like all his friends, he knew exactly where he was the day Biggie Smalls died, he could recite the lyrics to any Nas or Tupac song, and he kept his woman in line, with force if necessary. But Pappy, who grew up in the segregated South and hid in closets so he could read Aesop and Plato, had a different destiny in mind for his son. For years, Williams managed to juggle two disparate lifestyles- "keeping it real" in his friends' eyes and studying for the SATs under his father's strict tutelage. As college approached and the stakes of the thug lifestyle escalated, the revolving door between Williams's street life and home life threatened to spin out of control. Ultimately, Williams would have to decide between hip-hop and his future. Would he choose "street dreams" or a radically different dream- the one Martin Luther King spoke of or the one Pappy held out to him now? Williams is the first of his generation to measure the seductive power of hip-hop against its restrictive worldview, which ultimately leaves those who live it powerless. Losing My Cool portrays the allure and the danger of hip-hop culture like no book has before. Even more remarkably, Williams evokes the subtle salvation that literature offers and recounts with breathtaking clarity a burgeoning bond between father and son. Watch a Video...

Author by : Max A. Hunter
Languange Used : en
Release Date : 2022-09-30
Publisher by : Wipf and Stock Publishers

ISBN :

Description : With Speech Is My Hammer, Max Hunter draws on memoir and his own biography to call his readers to reimagine the meaning and power in literacy. Defining literacy as a "spectrum of skills, abilities, attainments, and performances," Hunter focuses on dispelling "literacy myths" and discussing how Black male artists, entertainers, professors, and writers have described their own "literacy narratives" in self-conscious, ambivalent terms. Beginning with Frederick Douglass's My Bondage My Freedom, W. E. B. Dubois's Soul of Black Folks, and Langston Hughes's Harlem Renaissance-memoir The Big Sea, Hunter conducts a literary inquiry that unearths their double-consciousness and literacy ambivalence. He moves on to reveal that for many contemporary Black men the arc of ambivalence rises even higher and becomes more complex, following the civil rights and the Black Power movements, and then sweeping sharply upward once again during the War on Drugs. Hunter provides rich illustrations and probing theses that complicate our commonsense reflections on their concealed angst regarding Black authenticity, respectability politics, and masculinity. Speech Is My Hammer moves the reader beyond considering literacy in normative terms to perceive its potential to facilitate transformative conversations among Black males....

Author by : Batya Ungar-Sargon
Languange Used : en
Release Date : 2023-03-28
Publisher by : Encounter Books

ISBN :

Description : Something is wrong with American journalism. Long before “fake news” became the calling card of the Right, Americans had lost faith in their news media. But lately, the feeling that something is off has become impossible to ignore. That’s because the majority of our mainstream news is no longer just liberal; it’s woke. Today’s newsrooms are propagating radical ideas that were fringe as recently as a decade ago, including “antiracism,” intersectionality, open borders, and critical race theory. How did this come to be? It all has to do with who our news media is written by—and who it is written for. In Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, Batya Ungar-Sargon reveals how American journalism underwent a status revolution over the twentieth century—from a blue-collar trade to an elite profession. As a result, journalists shifted their focus away from the working class and toward the concerns of their affluent, highly educated peers. With the rise of the Internet and the implosion of local news, America’s elite news media became nationalized and its journalists affluent and ideological. And where once business concerns provided a countervailing force to push back against journalists’ worst tendencies, the pressures of the digital media landscape now align corporate incentives with newsroom crusades. The truth is, the moral panic around race, encouraged by today’s elite newsrooms, does little more than consolidate the power of liberal elites and protect their economic interests. And in abandoning the working class by creating a culture war around identity, our national media is undermining American democracy. Bad News explains how this happened, why it happened, and the dangers posed by this development if it continues unchecked....

Author by : Thomas Chatterton Williams
Languange Used : de
Release Date : 2021
Publisher by :

ISBN :

Description : ...

Author by : The New York Times Editorial Staff
Languange Used : en
Release Date : 2018-12-15
Publisher by : The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc

ISBN :

Description : The subject of identity politics has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. In this collection of topical articles, readers will become familiar with a wide range of opinions and news concerning individual and group identities that form around race, sexual orientation, gender, political party affiliation, and more. The political usefulness of certain identities is explored, with a particular focus on the 2016 presidential election and the implications of one identity being politically asserted over another. Media literacy terms and questions will engage readers to consider the topic beyond the text....

Author by : Regina Brooks
Languange Used : en
Release Date : 2012-08-21
Publisher by : St. Martin's Griffin

ISBN :

Description : Even if you don't happen to be a celebrity, this book will teach you methods for striking publishing gold—conceptualizing, selling, and marketing a memoir—while dealing with the complicated emotions that arise during the creation of your work. If you've ever been told that "You should really write a book" and you've decided to give it a try, this book is for you. It hones in on the three key measures necessary for aspiring authors to conceptualize, sell, and market their memoirs. Written especially for those who don't happen to be celebrities You Should Really Write a Book reveals why and how so many relatively unknown memoirists are making a name for themselves. With references to more than four hundred books and six memoir categories, this is essential reading for anyone wanting to write a commercially viable memoir in today's vastly changing publishing industry. The days are long gone when editors and agents were willing to take on a manuscript simply because it was based on a "good" idea or even because it was well written. With eyes focused on the bottom line, they now look for skilled and creative authors with an established audience, too. Brooks and Richardson use the latest social networking, marketing, and promotional trends and explain how to conceptualize and strategize campaigns that cause buzz, dramatically fueling word-of-mouth and attracting attention in the publishing world and beyond. Full of current examples and in-depth analysis, this guide explains what sells and why, teaches writers to think like publishers, and offers guidance on dealing with complicated emotions—essential tools for maximizing memoir success....

Author by : Amy Muse
Languange Used : en
Release Date : 2020-03-06
Publisher by : McFarland

ISBN :

Description : This volume is the sixteenth in a series dedicated to presenting the latest findings in the fields of comparative drama, performance, and dramatic textual analysis. Featuring some of the best work from the 2019 Comparative Drama Conference in Orlando, this book engages audiences with new research on contemporary and classic drama, performance studies, scenic design and adaptation theory in nine scholarly essays, two event transcripts and six book reviews. This year's highlights include an interview with playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and a roundtable discussion on the sixtieth anniversary of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun....

Author by : Jim Vernon
Languange Used : en
Release Date : 2021-06-21
Publisher by : Springer Nature

ISBN :

Description : Drawing on the culture’s history before and after the birth of rap music, this book argues that the values attributed to Hip Hop by ‘postmodern’ scholars stand in stark contrast with those that not only implicitly guided its aesthetic elements, but are explicitly voiced by Hip Hop’s pioneers and rap music’s most consequential artists. It argues that the structural evacuation of the voices of its founders and organic intellectuals in the postmodern theorization of Hip Hop has foreclosed the culture’s ethical values and political goals from scholarly view, undermining its unity and progress. Through a historically informed critique of the hegemonic theoretical framework in Hip Hop Studies, and a re-centering of the culture’s fundamental proscription against ‘biting,' this book articulates and defends the aesthetic and ethical values of Hip Hop against their concealment and subversion by an academic discourse that merely ‘samples’ the culture for its own reactionary ends....

Author by : Ralph Ellison
Languange Used : de
Release Date : 2019-04-12
Publisher by : Aufbau Digital

ISBN :

Description : »Einer der bedeutendsten Autoren der amerikanischen Nachkriegsliteratur.« Paul Ingendaay, FAZ. Ralph Ellison, neben Toni Morrison und James Baldwin eine der großen Stimmen der afroamerikanischen Literatur der Gegenwart, gewann 1953 den National Book Award und wurde mit seinem gefeierten New-York-Roman schlagartig berühmt. Die Geschichte von der Odyssee eines namenlosen Schwarzen, die ihn von ganz oben bis ganz unten durch alle Schichten der amerikanischen Gesellschaft führt, ist eines der Lieblingsbücher von Barack Obama und bleibt hochaktuell: als schonungslose Abrechnung mit den alltäglichen rassistischen Ideologien und als Lob auf das gewachsene Selbstbewusstsein der noch immer um ihre selbstverständlichen Rechte Kämpfenden. »Ich bin unsichtbar, verstehen Sie, weil sich die Leute weigern, mich zu sehen. Wer sich mir nähert, sieht nur meine Umgebung, sich selbst oder die Auswüchse seiner Phantasie – in der Tat alles und jedes, nur mich nicht.«...

Author by : Ta-Nehisi Coates
Languange Used : de
Release Date : 2016-02-01
Publisher by : Hanser Berlin

ISBN :

Description : Wenn in den USA schwarze Teenager von Polizisten ermordet werden, ist das nur ein Problem von individueller Verfehlung? Nein, denn rassistische Gewalt ist fest eingewebt in die amerikanische Identität – sie ist das, worauf das Land gebaut ist. Afroamerikaner besorgten als Sklaven seinen Reichtum und sterben als freie Bürger auf seinen Straßen. In seinem schmerzhaften, leidenschaftlichen Manifest verdichtet Ta-Nehisi Coates amerikanische und persönliche Geschichte zu einem Appell an sein Land, sich endlich seiner Vergangenheit zu stellen. Sein Buch wurde in den USA zum Nr.-1-Bestseller und ist schon jetzt ein Klassiker, auf den sich zukünftig alle Debatten um Rassismus beziehen werden....