|
Arthur Flowers
Arthur R. Flowers, Jr. (born 1950) is an American novelist, memoirist, and performance poet. His work is known for its focus on the African-American experience, particularly folklore, blues music, and hoodoo spiritualism. A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Flowers fought in the Vietnam War before launching his literary career in New York City, where he was an executive director of the Harlem Writers Guild. He has been a member of the faculty of Syracuse University since 1996. Flowers lives in Syracuse, New York. Biography Early life Flowers is the son of Arthur R. Flowers, Sr., a medical doctor and bridge player of national rank, and Eloise Flowers, a nurse and teacher. He was born in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was immersed in the American Civil Rights movement from an early age. In high school, he developed a reputation for intelligence, earning the nickname "Mr. Brain", and for radicalness, earning the nickname "Bullet" because of the bullet he wore on a necklace. In 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-most populous city in Tennessee, after Nashville. Memphis is the fifth-most populous city in the Southeast, the nation's 28th-largest overall, as well as the largest city bordering the Mississippi River. The Memphis metropolitan area includes West Tennessee and the greater Mid-South region, which includes portions of neighboring Arkansas, Mississippi and the Missouri Bootheel. One of the more historic and culturally significant cities of the Southern United States, Memphis has a wide variety of landscapes and distinct neighborhoods. The first European explorer to visit the area of present-day Memphis was Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto in 1541. The high Chickasaw Bluffs protecting the location from the waters of the Mississipp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terry McMillan
Terry McMillan (born October 18, 1951) is an American novelist. Her work centers around the experiences of Black women in the United States. Early life McMillan was born in Port Huron, Michigan. She received a B.A. in journalism in 1977 from the University of California, Berkeley. She also attended the Master of Fine Arts program in film at Columbia University. Career McMillan's first book, ''Mama'', was published in 1987. Unsatisfied with her publisher's limited promotion of ''Mama'', McMillian promoted her own debut novel by writing thousands of booksellers, particularly African-American bookstores, and the book soon sold out of its initial first hardcover printing of 5,000 copies. McMillan achieved national attention in 1992 with her third novel, ''Waiting to Exhale''. The book remained on ''The New York Times'' bestseller list for many months and by 1995 it had sold more than three million copies. The novel contributed to a shift in Black popular cultural consciousness an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York Foundation For The Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations founded to support individual artists and emerging arts organizations, with a mission to "empower artists in all disciplines at critical stages in their creative lives." History NYFA was founded in 1971 by the New York State Council on the Arts as an independent organization to facilitate the development of arts activities throughout the State. NYFA has since expanded their programming around the country and internationally focusing on four core program areas: Artists' Fellowships, Fiscal Sponsorship, Professional Development, and Online Resources. As of 2021, the Executive Director is Michael Royce, who succeeded long time leader Ted Berger. Notable artists Artists who have received support from NYFA early on in their careers include Sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viking Press
Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim and then acquired by the Penguin Group in 1975. History Guinzburg, a Harvard graduate and former employee of Simon and Schuster and Oppenheimer, a graduate of Williams College and Alfred A. Knopf, founded Viking in 1925 with the goal of publishing nonfiction and "distinguished fiction with some claim to permanent importance rather than ephemeral popular interest." B. W. Huebsch joined the firm shortly afterward. Harold Guinzburg's son Thomas became president in 1961. The firm's name and logo—a Viking ship drawn by Rockwell Kent—were meant to evoke the ideas of adventure, exploration, and enterprise implied by the word "Viking." In August 1961, they acquired H.B. Huesbsch, which maintained a list of backlist titles from authors such as James Joyce an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Scott Reed (born February 22, 1938) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, composer, playwright, editor and publisher known for his satirical works challenging American political culture. Perhaps his best-known work is '' Mumbo Jumbo'' (1972), a sprawling and unorthodox novel set in 1920s New York. Reed's work has often sought to represent neglected African and African-American perspectives; his energy and advocacy have centered more broadly on neglected peoples and perspectives, irrespective of their cultural origins. Life and career Reed was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His family moved to Buffalo, New York, when he was a child, during the Great Migration. After attending local schools, Reed attended the University at Buffalo. Reed withdrew from college in his junior year, partly for financial reasons, but mainly because he felt he needed a new atmosphere to support his writing and music. He said of this decision: This was the best thing that could h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on Hoodoo (spirituality), hoodoo. The most popular of her four novels is ''Their Eyes Were Watching God'', published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, and essays. Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, and moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, in 1894. She later used Eatonville as the setting for many of her stories. In her early career, Hurston conducted anthropological and ethnographic research while a student at Barnard College and Columbia University. She had an interest in African-American and Caribbean folklore, and how these contributed to the community's identity. She also wrote fiction about contemporary issues in the Black community and became a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Her short satires, drawing from the African-America ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oral Storytelling
Oral storytelling is an ancient and intimate tradition between the storyteller and their audience. The storyteller and the listeners are physically close, often seated together in a circular fashion. The intimacy and connection is deepened by the flexibility of oral storytelling which allows the tale to be moulded according to the needs of the audience and the location or environment of the telling. Listeners also experience the urgency of a creative process taking place in their presence and they experience the empowerment of being a part of that creative process. Storytelling creates a personal bond with the teller and the audience. The flexibility of oral storytelling extends to the teller as well. Each teller will incorporate their own personality and may choose to add characters into the story. As a result, there will be numerous variations of a single story. Some tellers consider anything outside the narrative as extraneous, while other storytellers choose to enhance their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keith Gilyard
Raymond Keith Gilyard (born 1952 in New York City) is a writer and American professor of English who teaches and researches in the fields of rhetoric, composition, literacy studies, sociolinguistics, and African American literature. Interested in the complex interplay among race, ethnicity, language, writing, and politics, his primary interest lies in identifying intersections of African American English and composing practices. Advocating African American English as a legitimate discourse, Gilyard has been a prominent voice in the movement to recognize ethnic and cultural discourses other than Standard English as valid. As a literary scholar and creative writer, his interests have been in the interplay among African American literature, rhetorical criticism, and bio-critical work. Education Gilyard received his Bachelor of Science degree from the City University CUNY Baccalaureate Program (1974), his Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University (1979), and his doctorate (Ed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Griot
A griot (; ; Manding: jali or jeli (in N'Ko: , ''djeli'' or ''djéli'' in French spelling); Serer: kevel or kewel / okawul; Wolof: gewel) is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, and/or musician. The griot is a repository of oral tradition and is often seen as a leader due to their position as an advisor to royal personages. As a result of the former of these two functions, they are sometimes called bards. They also act as mediators in disputes. Occurrence and naming Many griots today live in many parts of West Africa and are present among the Mande peoples ( Mandinka or Malinké, Bambara, Soninke etc.), Fulɓe (Fula), Hausa, Songhai, Tukulóor, Wolof, Serer,Unesco. Regional Office for Education in Africa, ''Educafrica, Numéro 11'', (ed. Unesco, Regional Office for Education in Africa, 1984), p. 110Hale, Thomas Albert, ''Griots and Griottes: Masters of Words and Music'', Indiana University Press (1998), p. 176, Mossi, Dagomba, Mauritan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metafiction
Metafiction is a form of fiction which emphasises its own narrative structure in a way that continually reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story-telling, and works of metafiction directly or indirectly draw attention to their status as artifacts. Metafiction is frequently used as a form of parody or a tool to undermine literary conventions and explore the relationship between literature and reality, life, and art. Although metafiction is most commonly associated with postmodern literature that developed in the mid-20th century, its use can be traced back to much earlier works of fiction, such as ''The Canterbury Tales'' (Geoffrey Chaucer, 1387), ''Don Quixote'' (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605), ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' (Laurence Sterne, 1759), and '' Vanity Fair'' (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847). Metafiction became particularly prominent in the 1960 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African-American Vernacular English
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, ), also referred to as Black (Vernacular) English, Black English Vernacular, or occasionally Ebonics (a colloquial, controversial term), is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians. Having its own unique grammatical, vocabulary, and accent features, AAVE is employed by middle-class Black Americans as the more informal and casual end of a sociolinguistic continuum. However, in formal speaking contexts, speakers tend to switch to more standard English grammar and vocabulary, usually while retaining elements of the nonstandard accent. Despite being widespread throughout the United States, AAVE should not be assumed to be the native dialect of all African Americans. As with most African-American English, African-American Vernacular English shares a large portion of its grammar and phonology with the rural dialects of the Sou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Migration (African American)
The Great Migration, sometimes known as the Great Northward Migration or the Black Migration, was the movement of six million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West between 1910 and 1970. It was caused primarily by the poor economic conditions for African American people, as well as the prevalent racial segregation and discrimination in the Southern states where Jim Crow laws were upheld. In particular, continued lynchings motivated a portion of the migrants, as African Americans searched for social reprieve. The historic change brought by the migration was amplified because the migrants, for the most part, moved to the then-largest cities in the United States (New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C.) at a time when those cities had a central cultural, social, political, and economic influence over the United States. (with excepts from, Gregory, James. The Southe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_-_TIMEA.jpg "Click for more on -> Oral Storytelling")
