TW/CW: police brutality/murder, suicide and depression, violence what do you do when “tired” isn’t enough? “i’m tired” isn’t an adequate response to what i’m feeling anymore. murder after murder. slain Black flesh after slain Black flesh. i’m too tired to lament, but also too tired to do anything else. we write, we organize, we cry,...
Tag: langston hughes
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Alice Ruth Moore: Love, Art, and Black Political Thought
Alice Ruth Moore’s history of life deserves filling. Her reputation as an eloquent speaker, writer, and activist all intertwine. By Gayla Tillman The Harlem Renaissance marks one of the most significant periods of Black art and Black political thought. History books all over the world hail the Harlem Renaissance as a beacon for Black cultural...
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Langston Hughes Doesn’t Owe Us More Than What He Left Us With
What are we writing onto Langston Hughes and others like him when we use them as canvases to paint our own frustrations about queer (in)visibility and closets? “Unfortunately (and to John’s distrust of God) it seemed his son was turning out to be a queer. He was a brilliant queer, on the Honor Roll in...
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Queer Stories Deserve Celebration: Tribute To The Harlem Renaissance
Black stories are honored more now than ever, but a particular kind of anti-Blackness now stifles how we come in contact with queer literature and history. By A.D. Boynton, II I am a Black, queer millennial academic who teaches writing and literature, and I’m always interested in what students have or haven’t read by the...
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Langston Hughes And The River In Which My Lineage Flows
In Langston, I found that my own soul can grow deep and stretch throughout time and space. With Langston, I swim alongside our heritage. By Darby James Davis “I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the river” – “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes Rivers are ever-flowing passages...
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Black Poetry and Black Rage for Giovanni Melton
Being a Black poet is being stuck in this in-between, an inherently political place to be. TW/CW: mentions of homophobia and murder “In every human Beast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance.” – Phillis Wheatley When I heard the news of...
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Homophobia in the Black Community and the Rise of the Hotep
How Supposedly ‘Woke’ Hoteps Foster Hatred Toward Queer and Trans Blacks Before our good, righteous Hotep brothas hijack national conversation that is currently underway about the state of the LGBTQ community in America — prompted by the recent tragedy in Orlando — we’re here to help preclude the lies they peddle in before they begin. According to...