This fall I did a series of calls to students in my “The ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture” and Blackness and Digital Life courses. I did a call almost every week until my body wouldn’t allow me to do so anymore. I recorded them in one take, so there are imperfections in them all. I was doing the best I could. Lectures such as these served as the call, and then selected students would offer an in-depth response, and then the rest of the class would constitute the choir, singing on the themes for that particular week. After the call, response, and choir, we would convene synchronously to discuss. All of this was happening in the digital spaces of Canvas message boards and Google Docs and Zoom. This is one such lecture for “The ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture.” The previous week we had read Raquel Gates’ Double Negative. For this week, we read selections from Elizabeth Alexander’s The Black Interior, the entirety of Kevin Quashie’s The Sovereignty of Quiet, and students could choose Barry Jenkins’ Medicine for Melancholy or Moonlight to watch. You can listen/watch here.
Growing Up with Mama’s Gun
The fall Mama's Gun came out two of my three boyfriends found out about each other and got to fighting in the hallway outside my dorm room. I played "Green Eyes" over and over and wailed and sobbed like I had been the one cheated on. It was all such … [Continue reading]
HEAVY: Kiese Laymon in Conversation
It is the last day of the year now, and HEAVY is still the Big Bang, the beginning, three lifetimes of ebó, the Genesis, Old Testament, New Testament, Future Testament, and Revelation of books--books in general, Black books, Black southern books, … [Continue reading]
We Slay, Part I
Beyoncé don't give no fucks about your Saturday afternoon. Which is to say--as Big Freedia's voice says in Beyoncé's new song, "Formation"--"[She] did not come to play with you hoes. [She] came to slay, bitch." And slay she did in her usual … [Continue reading]
Pioneer Up in This Bitch: Gangsta Boo & Feminist Historiographies of Rap
Gangsta Boo's Enquiring Minds (1998) was the soundtrack to a season of fence-jumping feminism, a culmination of springs, summers, and falls spent fighting boys and finding our voices in communities that worked to silence the raucous and bulbous … [Continue reading]
Zeezus Does the Firing ‘Round Hurr
June marked the beginning of my Jesus year, and it has been an interesting month to say the least, which I have found to be variously amusing and disappointing. I know some of y'all have some burning questions, so who am I not to spit to put your … [Continue reading]
Flags and Flesh: Region, Race, and the Simulacra of Racial Terror
Last week, a white man went into Emanuel AME in Charleston, South Carolina and murdered Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Reverend DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Honorable Reverend Clementa Pickney, Tywanza Sanders, Reverend Daniel Simmons Senior, … [Continue reading]
The Emperor Has No Clothes; Or, Why I Ain’t Waiting In No Damn Line
For the first time, I am seeking an optional transfer for my daughter for the 2015-2016 school year. But I am not waiting in no damn line. I will, as the Shelby County Schools optional transfer FAQs dictate, proceed to the Board of Education on … [Continue reading]
Hiding and Seeking: A Black Girl Blues Account
People gave me funny looks but they ain't really say nothing because they figured I could hold my own. And they would have been right, if a body could actually hold her own in a forced unraveling. By the time I was a gentle heap of spiraled brown … [Continue reading]