Fierce and sensual, the poems in Outlandish Blues merge everyday speech with a shimmering lyricism and burst from the page into song. Honoree Fanonne Jeffers sees the blues, what she terms the "shared 'blue notes, ''' as an important intersection between the secular and the divine, and between the various African American vernacular traditions, from spirituals to jazz. Part Nina Simone, part Bessie Smith, her poems are filled with a sweaty honesty, moving from the personal to the collective experience. This movement is often accomplished through the use of personae, concentrated here in a...
Fierce and sensual, the poems in Outlandish Blues merge everyday speech with a shimmering lyricism and burst from the page into song. Honoree Fanonne ...
The great scholar, W.E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called Double Consciousness, a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive.
Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Boiss words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americansthe revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmersAiley carries Du Boiss Problem on her shoulders.
Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in...
The great scholar, W.E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called Double Consciousness, a sensitivity that ...
