Celebrate 44

From All Things Considered on NPR: President-elect Barack Obama has been many things: lawyer, community organizer, politician — and writer. A panel of literary pundits, including Azar Nafisi, Rick Moody and Edwidge Danticat, assess his memoir Dreams from My Father and tell us what they think his writerly-ways might portend for his term in the […]

This was the year of Michael Jackson, Bryant Gumble and the extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act!

From Michael C. Moynihan at ReasonOnline: For political artists such as Rosler, the past eight years have been boom years, providing much opportunity for outrage (for those who remember the Reagan-era New York art scene, this is hardly surprising). But what will become of the perpetually outraged artist in the event of an Obama administration? […]

The year 1981 saw many achievements in African-American literature and drama literature when Charles Fuller won an award for A Soldier’s Play and Toni Morrison released her hit novel Tar Baby.

From David Swerdick at TheRoot.com: They are black Republicans… A rapidly disappearing political subculture that seeks legitimacy by asserting that they are something different, something special—the other dark meat. They define themselves—with a quizzical ethos of inverse snobbery often mistaken for self-loathing—by what they are not: Al Sharpton, in need of affirmative action, or “like […]

Check out the year 1980 when Robert Johnson founds Black Entertainment Television and the “Big O” gets inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame!

From Laura Brunts at the Atlantic: According to a recent Census Bureau report, whites could become a minority of the U.S. population as early as 2042. In the January/February issue of the Atlantic, contributor Hua Hsu explores the implications of this development from both a demographic and cultural perspective. To read more, click here. RETURN […]

Illustration by Felix Sockwell From Hua Hsu at the Atlantic: “Civilization’s going to pieces,” he remarks. He is in polite company, gathered with friends around a bottle of wine in the late-afternoon sun, chatting and gossiping. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Colored Empires by […]