Cover image for Black ink : literary legends on the peril, power, and pleasure of reading and writing
Black ink : literary legends on the peril, power, and pleasure of reading and writing
Title:
Black ink : literary legends on the peril, power, and pleasure of reading and writing
ISBN:
9781501154287
Edition:
First 37 Ink/Atria Books hardcover ed.
Physical Description:
xxiv, 244 pages ; 24 cm
Contents:
Our first stories / Reading matters / Suspected of having a book / Nine years deprived of a sheet of paper / A whole race begins to read / The Negro in literature and art / Books and things / Poetry is practical / The business of the writer / Turning point / Lessons in living / Morehouse College / The site of memory / Where are the people of color in children's books? / Reading for revolution / Twenty-one / A temporary library in a small place / What is an African American classic? / New Black scribe / MFA vs. POC / Create dangerously / How to write / From Jamaica to Minnesota to myself / I once was Miss America / The mecca / The danger of the single story / What books mean to me
Genre:
Summary:
Spanning over 250 years of history, Black Ink traces black literature in America from Frederick Douglass to Ta-Nehisi Coates in this masterful collection of twenty-five illustrious and moving essays on the power of the written word. Throughout American history black people are the only group of people to have been forbidden by law to learn to read. This unique collection seeks to shed light on that injustice and subjugation, as well as the hard-won literary progress made, putting some of America's most cherished voices in a conversation in one magnificent volume that presents reading as an act of resistance. Organized into three sections, the Peril, the Power, and Pleasure, and with an array of contributors both classic and contemporary, Black Ink presents the brilliant diversity of black thought in America while solidifying the importance of these writers within the greater context of the American literary tradition. At times haunting and other times profoundly humorous, this unprecedented anthology guides you through the remarkable experiences of some of America's greatest writers and their lifelong pursuits of literacy and literature. The foreword was written by Nikki Giovanni. Contributors include: Frederick Douglass, Solomon Northup, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Maya Angelou, Martin Luther King, Jr., Toni Morrison, Walter Dean Myers, Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture], Alice Walker, Jamaica Kincaid, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Terry McMillan, Junot Diaz, Edwidge Danticat, Colson Whitehead, Marlon James, Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Colson Whitehead. The anthology features a bonus in-depth interview with President Barack Obama.
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