Amiri Baraka: Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
And now, each night I count the stars,
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.
Olga Tokarczuk: The Tender Narrator (Nobel Lecture)
I believe I must tell stories as if the world were a living, single entity, constantly forming before our eyes, and as if we were a small and at the same time powerful part of it.
Zenobia Jeffries Warfield: 8 Must-Reads by Women Who Take on White Supremacy and Patriarchal Power
These authors pull no punches as they take on topics of race, gender, and justice.
Video: Terrance Hayes, “American Sonnets For My Past and Future Assassin”
Terrance Hayes discusses his poetry collection, American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin at Politics and Prose in Washington DC on 7/16/18. Written during the first two hundred days … Continue reading
Video: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — The danger of a single story
Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
Toni Morrison: Nobel Prize 1993 Acceptance Speech (Text and Video)
“Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise.” Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard … Continue reading
Vox Populi 