I have been absent from the blogosphere for about a month, but am now back and plan to post regularly.The first order of business to congratulate Annette Gordon Reed on the Pulitzer she won for her latest book The Hemingses of Monticello. The book chronicles the Hemings family from the 1700s in Virginia to 1826, when Thomas Jefferson died at his and the enslaved Hemings family home at Monticello.
I got the book when it first came out last September, not only because of my interest in the life of Sally Hemings, but because of the Hemings family's imprint on the American experience and the intriguing life of Jefferson's chef and former slave James Hemings, brother of Sally. I read Reed's earlier book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy years ago and visited Monticello in 2006 to learn as much as I could about the Hemingses. After hearing about the Pulitzer win on Monday, I plan on finally sitting down with her latest book starting tomorrow.
If you would like to see more of Gordon-Reed, she will be giving the University of Delaware's Department of History's William Watson Harrington Lecture on May 7th. The topic of her lecture will be "The Hemingses of Monticello: Writing the Life of an Enslaved Family" and the event is free and open to the public.
Below is a short list of profiles on Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello:
Image courtesy of The Washington Post.
I still have my copy of his book From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans that I got as a teenager and cannot imagine ever parting with it.
His work truly helped shape my life.
He died yesterday of congestive heart failure in a hospital in Durham, N.C. He was 94. The Washington Post wonderful tribute to Franklin on their website.
This regular section of The Passage Project is the spot to find abbreviated notes on news and events throughout the African Diaspora.
Art
Cape Town
The Association for Visaual Arts (AVA) will be opening three solo exhibitions Monday, January 19th with Lindile Magunya's Disgrace, Mawande Zenzile's Crawling Nation, and Kilmany-Jo Liversage's Symbol of Tribute through February 6th.
Artwork by Mawande Zenzile courtesy of AVA.
From the artist statement of Zenzile:
“I have experimented with the revival of Xhosa ‘art’ production,
positioning myself and examining this culture in contemporary ways of
art production inside Africa. In my work I challenge expectations,
perception and misconception behind blackness and consciousness;
through this I interrogate, history itself, subcultures, space, and
time."
Image courtesy of Girls Write Now.
Literature
New York
Girls Write Now is spreading the word about the upcoming submission deadline for The Scholastic Art and Writing Award by The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers January 13th. I've attended a reading organized by the Girls Write Now in the past and many of it's young writers have won the scholarship. For more details about the award and the program, visit the organizations website. Good luck!
Film
New York
Healing Starts with Us: An Open Book will be screened January 15, from 7 to 9:30 p.m at Symphony Space. The film looks at the stigma of mental illness in the Black community and features interviews with Ruby Dee, Mo'Nique, Susan L. Taylor, Terry McMillian, among others. Author Terrie M. Williams will be there to discuss the topic with the audience and all those in attendance will receive a copy of her book Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We're Not Hurting (2008). Tickets are $25.
On top, photo of Eartha Kitt in 1952 taken by Carl Van Vechten, Courtesy of the Library of Congress. On bottom, image of Eartha Kitt courtesy of her website.
Beginning her career as a dancer in the Katherine Dunham Dance Company in New York City, Eatha Kitt triumphed as an actress, singer and dancer, far from her birthplace in rural South Carolina. Kitt died on Christmas day from colon cancer at the age of 81.
Below is a short list of a few of Eartha Kitt's career highlights:
Images of Eartha Kitt courtesy of her website.
Her official website includes a store where you can find all things Eartha, including sheet music, DVD's, music, books and frame portraits.
Make me a grave where'er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth's humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.
I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.
I could not rest if I heard the tread
Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother's shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.
I could not sleep if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.
I'd shudder and start if I heard the bay
Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey,
And I heard the captive plead in vain
As they bound afresh his galling chain.
If I saw young girls from their mother's arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.
I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.
I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves.
Image of Toni Morrison courtesy of Princeton University.
Today, the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, CUNY announced that Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison will be the honorary chair of the 2010 National Black Writer's Conference. Taking place March 26 -28, 2010, the conference will be held at the Medgar Evers College campus in Brooklyn, NY. The theme of the conference is taken from John Oliver Killens book And Then We Heard the Thunder: Black Writers Reconstructing Memories and Lighting the Way.
Morrison's books include Beloved, The Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, and most recently A Mercy.
Author Zadie Smith at the New York Public Library. Image courtesy of WNYC.
Last Friday night, author Zadie Smith appeared at the New York Public Library's lecture and interview program Speaking in Tongues, Live from the NYPL.
During her lecture, she spoke honestly about the complexities of race and identity, in addition to the author's role of speaking "multiple voices in different register's". William Shakespeare, the character Eliza Doolittle, Barack Obama, Black British urban dialect and the idea of "keeping it real" all found their way into her brilliant lecture that was often remarkable revealing.
While listening to her lecture I was extremely moved because I was reminded of the balancing acts of my past. I was raised in suburban Chicago with parents who were highly educated and worked hard to make sure we had the best in terms of education as well as comfort. Though I've never had any questions in terms of my own racial identity, I've been occasionally accused of "talking white" by some and have been called racial slurs by others over the course of my life. Therefore, I was deeply touched as Smith flawlessly illustrated navigating through life as a person of color in the 21st century.
One of my favorite moments was Smith's story about being at a private party in New York City November 4th for election night and later receiving an enticing invitation to another celebration at a reggae bar in Harlem. To learn how her evening turned out and her plans for an upcoming book, listen to the entire lecture by visiting NPR's Art.Cult website. The audio also includes a short but entertaining Q & A.
The entire NYPL series is available on iTunes.
Image of a first edition copy courtesy of the University of North Carolina website: Documenting the American South.
On today's Situation Room on CNN, there was an interesting report on this the history of slavery and the White House. In it, they mentioned that the first memoir written by a resident of the White House was by Paul Jennings, a former slave of President James Madison. His 19 page memoir, A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison, was written in 1865.
The following is an excerpt from the preface:
Among the laborers at the Department of the Interior is an intelligent colored man, Paul Jennings, who was born a slave on President Madison's estate, in Montpelier, Va., in 1799. His reputed father was Benj. Jennings, an English trader there; his mother, a slave of Mr. Madison, and the grand-daughter of an Indian. Paul was a "body servant" of Mr. Madison, till his death, and afterwards of Daniel Webster, having purchased his freedom of Mrs. Madison. His character for sobriety, truth, and fidelity, is unquestioned; and as he was a daily witness of interesting events, I have thought some of his recollections were worth writing down in almost his own language.
To get a piece of history, a recent edition published by Cornell University Library, is available on Amazon.
