Not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour - and in the oddest places! - for the lack of it.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (1956)

And all things were transfigured in the day But me, whom radiant beauty could not move; For you, more wonderful, were far away, And I was blind with hunger for your love. -Claude McKay, "Summer Morn in New Hampshire"

The New Negro: An Interpretation, edited by Alain Locke, cover by Winold Reiss, 1925.

The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925) was an anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays on African and African-American art and literature. It was edited by Alain Locke, the first African-American Rhodes Scholar, who obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard and who taught at Howard University for 35 years. The book is considered by literary scholars and critics to be the definitive text of the Harlem Renaissance. It included Locke's title essay, "The New Negro," as well as nonfiction essays, poetry, and fiction by Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Eric Walrond, among others. The anthology showed how Blacks sought social, political, and artistic change. Instead of accepting their position in society, Locke saw the "New Negro" as championing and demanding civil rights. His anthology also sought to change old stereotypes and replace them with new visions of Black identity that resisted simplification. The essays and poems in the anthology mirrored real-life events and experiences.

Photo: winoldreiss.org

Songs for the People

#Listen to, and #read "Songs for the People" by Frances Ellen Watkins at #GoodPoetry. #poetry #poet #literature

by Ellen Watkins Harper Photograph of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper in 1893 as featured in the publication “Women of Distinction: Remarkable in Works and Invincible in Character by Lawson Andrew Scruggs (Raleigh) / State Library of North Carolina, Government & Heritage Library Listen to “Songs for the People” by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper / Read by Teyuna Darris (on YouTube) Let me make the…

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Dive into the heart of African-American literature with our latest article on the unforgettable Zora Neale Hurston. Uncover the legacy that reshaped the literary world and continues to inspire today. From gripping narratives to empowering themes, see why Hurston's works are more than just stories—they're a movement. Your journey into profound literary significance starts here! #AfricanAmericanLiterature #ZoraNealeHurston

American't: The Corporate Plantation by King Bell

King Bell’s powerful book, “American’t,” delves deep into the challenges of six Black men in The Corporate Plantation. Through their eyes, you will gain a unique perspective on the struggles of being Black in a country that seems to be against you. This novel will make you question your American citizenship in a way that is both funny and moving.

Learn about what it’s like to be Black in America. Grab a copy at www.americant.theauthorkingbell.com.

For the ppl in the back!!

starting a new journal (!!) on this lovely december morning, and dipping in and out of this gayl jones’s butter.

Malcolm X With Keffiyeh

Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it’s against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it’s against the oppressor. You don’t need anything else.” (Malcolm X)

“The zionist argument to justify Israel’s present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history.”(Malcolm X)

“Did the Zionists have the legal or moral right to invade Arab Palestine, uproot its Arab citizens from their homes and seize all Arab property for themselves just based on the “religious” claim that their forefathers lived there thousands of years ago? Only a thousand years ago the Moors lived in Spain. Would this give the Moors of today the legal and moral right to invade the Iberian Peninsula, drive out its Spanish citizens, and then set up a new Moroccan nation … where Spain used to be, as the European zionists have done to our Arab brothers and sisters in Palestine?…” (Malcolm X)

Oil Painting by: Safia Latif

Toni Morrison, 1974.

Photographer: Waring Abbott

I had thought of suicide when I was much younger, it would have been for revenge, it would have been my way of informing the world how awfully it had made me suffer.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (1956)

Current reading is Harlem Shadows, the landmark 1922 poetry collection by the Jamaican-American author Claude McKay (1890-1948). To breathe new life into traditional forms like the sonnet, at a time when Modernism and free verse were overwhelmingly dominant, is impressive. To write of intense emotions--alienation, grief, rage--in a beautiful way is no less impressive. To do both at once is astonishing, and that is what McKay did. His work is an undying cri de coeur against racial injustice in both his native and his adopted countries, and it stands as one of the crowning achievements of the Harlem Renaissance.

Sean Qualls • American picture book illustrator

Sean Qualls has illustrated many non-fiction books for children. Pictred above is a sampler of illustrations for: Grandad Mandela, Lullaby ( based on a poem by Langston Hughes); Lower right: an untitled painting; lower left, illustration for the book Why am I Me?

"The truth is we don't know what we don't know. We don't even know the questions we need to ask in order to find out, but when we learn one tiny little thing, a dim light comes on in a dark hallway, and suddenly a new question appears. We spend decades, centuries, millennia, trying to answer that one question so that another dim light will come on. That's science, but that's also everything else, isn't it?"

Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

HELLO. I made a discord for those interested in black spiritualism, community and hoodoo.