#african american literature

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

#short stories #short story #a dead djinn in cairo #phenderson djèlí clark #p. djèlí clark #p djèlí clark #dexter gabriel #21st century literature #american literature #african american literature #black literature #english language literature #have you read this short fiction? #book polls #completed polls

[dearlyjess]

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

#studyblr #study #booklr #reading #litblr #books #literature #journal #reading aesthetic #light academia #writeblr #writing #african american literature #poc studyblr #commonplace #journaling #fountain pen

[chaoticsoft]

Toni Morrison, 1974.

Photographer: Waring Abbott

#toni morrison #beloved #sula #song of solomon #jazz #love #home #paradise #tar baby #the bluest eye #american literature #african american literature #black history month #literature

[gennsoup]

"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

#Yaa Gyasi #Transcendent Kingdom #questions #science #exploration #curiosity #discovery #Ghanaian literature #African literature #African American literature #quotes #quotes blog #literary quotes #literature quotes #literature #book quotes

[my-hoodoo-library]

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

#non blacks dni #hoodoo #booklr #recs #mami wata #african american history #african american literature #african american #african american culture #african american spirituality #black spirituality #black history #book recs

[iambic-stan]

last book read + last stethoscope used, part 24

It's my green and gold MDF with James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. What did I expect from this short but difficult read? I'm not sure, but I know what I wasn't expecting. I wasn't expecting something like The Great Gatsby, but with far less glamour and wealth and somehow more misery. I wasn't expecting to learn that the guillotine was still used as a means of execution in France until capital punishment was abolished there in 1981. What a heinous thing to imagine in such recent history (or at all, tbh). I didn't expect to dislike the characters so much yet still be able to feel so sympathetic toward them (same as I felt reading Gatsby). I didn't expect to read so much misogyny and internalized homophobia that's never truly corrected with these characters. None of this is easy to digest (and was never meant to be), but I'm glad I read it. In 1980, Baldwin said the book is "not so much about homosexuality, it is what happens if you are so afraid that you finally cannot love anybody." (from the introduction by Colm Toibin)

#James Baldwin #Giovanni's Room #cardiophilia #cardiophile #stethoscopes #auscultation #lgbtq+ #lgbtqia+ #black authors #black queerness #African American literature #queer reads #queer literature #last book last stethoscope #lbls

[supremelyblvk]

Been a while 📖 Blackademia

#black #black excellence #dark academia #academia aesthetic #poc dark academia #melanin #poc light academia #poc academia #black academia #african american literature

[alienejj]

thrifted bookish haul 4/mar/24

A novel, a short story anthology, a printed candle in the shape of an apple and a peculiar bookmark:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The Story; Love, Loss and the Lives of Women short stories chosen by Victoria Hislop.

You've no idea the emotions I emoted, the internal scream I screamt when I saw that cloth bookmark in the design of a prayer rug. I had seen those kinds of bookmarks in aesthetic book pics on Pinterest and had no idea where to get them so coming across one in a charity shop, still in its plastic cover, was incredible.

#books #dark academia #reading #literature #academia #lit #light academia #bookblr #booklr #nejj bookblr #book haul #book reccs #book recommendations #thrifted books #african american literature #book blog #fiction #short story anthology #modern classics #photography

[naranjapetrificada]

Alternate history novel idea free to a good (black) home:

Enslaved Africans literate in Arabic use fables to teach enslaved children the script and write it in relevant shapes a la:

Calligraphic lion by Ahmed Hilmi,  April 19, 1913. Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman Art From the Khalili Collection. x

And they convince white people it's "harmless" like capoeira or coded spiritual songs so they can continue to pass it on. Something something a significantly larger corpus of African diaspora literature survives and documents slavery in much more detail. Ideally an African script would be utilized but Arabic seemed the most likely to me (glad to be wrong!)

[Bonus points if this led to the survival of more creoles in North America. I regularly lament that (beyond examples like Gullah/Geechee) our vernacular(s) isn't more impenetrable to outsiders.]

#free to a good home #because I'm not gonna write it #at least not for decades #writing prompt #african american history #african diaspora #african american literature #slavery cw #cw slavery #just tell your agent you saw the idea on tumblr so they can send me a small check #mostly I just want this novel to exist #did something like this maybe happen in The Book of Negroes? #I had to return it to the library before I got very far and haven't picked it up since #historical literacy

[edlboetie]

"I just don't want him beating on me all the time," he said at last. "I ain't no dog." She sighed, and turned slightly away, looking out of the window. "Your daddy beats you," she said, "because he loves you." Roy laughed. "That ain't the kind of love l understand, old lady. What you reckon he'd do if he didn't love me?"

- Go Tell It On the Mountain, James Baldwin

#quotes #james baldwin #go tell it on the mountain #american literature #african american literature

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

"Brownies" by Z.Z. Packer is available to read here

#short stories #short story #brownies #zz packer #z.z. packer #z. z. packer #21st century literature #black literature #african american literature #american literature #english language literature #have you read this short fiction? #book polls #completed polls #links to text

[dearlyjess]

currently reading 🍂

#studyblr #study #booklr #reading #litblr #books #literature #journal #reading aesthetic #light academia #fall #autumn #yea #cozy #jesmyn ward #african american literature #gradblr #grad school #currently reading

[romanchacon]

On June 15, 1939 Zora Neale Hurston recorded "Uncle Bud," a bawdy song found all over the South that went on to become a Cajun-Creole Zydeco classic. Hurston explains, "'Uncle Bud' is not a work song. It is a sort of social song for amusement." One of the first documented instances of the song in print appeared as "O-Bud!" in a Texas Folklore Society publication in 1928, collected in Virginia ca. 1924, but Hurston likely first heard the song from black working men while she was doing folklore field work in logging and terpantine camps in Louisiana. It's an invaluable audible artifact from almost a century ago. And it's quite raunchy to say the least! At the end, either Stetson Kennedy or Hurbert Halpert, the Library of Congress folk collectors in that session, say with an audible grin, "I think that's a very valuable contribution to scientific recording."

#zora neale hurston #folklore #folk music #black history #music #music history #musicology #literature #african american literature #african diaspora #zydeco #cajun music #louisiana creole #boozoo chavis #rockin' sidney #sonny terry #Spotify

[gennsoup]

And I sing, again, those songs because I know The value of sweet music when we need to pass The time without wondering what rots beneath our feet.

Jericho Brown, Shovel

#Jericho Brown #Shovel #The Tradition #sing #songs #sweet music #American poetry #African American literature #BIPOC author #poetry #poetry quotes #quotes #quotes blog #literary quotes #literature quotes #literature #book quotes #books #words #text

[zelihatrifles]

The Bluest Eye

"They beat their children with one hand and stole for them with the other. The hands that felled trees also cut umbilical cords; the hands that wrung the heads of chickens and butchered hogs also nudged African violets into bloom..."

Morrison's novels are all political, and her debut novel even more so. Here you have her recounting the lives of countless black women, for whom often the only alternative is between exhibitionist promiscuity and domestic submission, because that is how they are brought up. So, when Pecola prays for blue eyes, unknowingly perhaps, she is also wishing for more assertion, because all she's seen from childhood is her mother wearing her ugliness with resignation. Self-love has never been more important. Morrison leaves you questioning fundamental assumptions and your privileged self-perception, filling you with guilt, doubt and anger.

#books #reading #currently reading #african american literature #black literature #toni morrison #anti racism #feminism #black feminism #postcolonial literature #postcolonialism #the bluest eye #pecola #impressions not reviews

[bookstoreadbtr]

American History Series is a Children's Book Series. Each book includes American inventors and innovators who have contributed to American history and it's culture. The series is written and illustrated by Casey Bell.

#childrensbooks #elementarybooks #elementaryteachers #historyteachers #teachers #parents #booksforchildren #childrensbookauthor

#childrens book #childrens books #children's books #african american history #african american literature #african american #black history month #black history