Category: Book/Video Reviews

  • Review: In New Biopic ‘Barry,’ The Real Obama Remains Hidden Newsweek 2016-12-16 Tom Shone While President Barack Obama decides on his future—a return to his roots as a community organizer? A de facto leader for the Trump resistance? More writing?—pop culture has stepped in to give him the Mount Rushmore treatment. First we had Southside…

  • How ‘Barry’ Gets Obama Right—And Wrong Newsweek 2016-12-21 Matthew Cooper, Political Editor President Barack Obama during a White House news conference in Washington, December 16. A new Netflix production, “Barry,” charts his college years in New York, when “Barry,” as he was known, wrestled with his racial identity. JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS There’s less than a month…

  • New Book Confronts Colorism in 21st Century America NBC News 2016-12-21 Lesley-Ann Brown “The Masque of Blackness” (1605) is an early Jacobean era “masque” — a popular form of 16th & 17th century amateur dramatic theatre — and is quite possibly the first instance in English literature where the topic of skin color is not…

  • Book Reviews: Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist [Geiger Review] Comparative Civilizations Review Volume 75, Number 75, Fall 2016 Article 11 pages 125-126 Pedro Geiger G. Reginald Daniel, Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2012 The long and excellent book by Reginald…

  • Where Has All the Loving Gone? A Review of the New Film, ‘Loving’ African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) 2016-11-27 Peter Cole, Professor of History Western Illinois University A new film about the Southern working class couple whose love and dedication broke the back of anti-miscegenation laws across the nation arrives just in time. Released…

  • Beacon Goes to the Movies: “Loving” and the History of White Supremacy Beacon Broadside: A Project of Beacon Press 2016-12-15 Ayla Zuraw-Friedland, Editorial Assistant When publicity assistant Perpetua Charles and senior editor Joanna Green first began planning a staff trip to see the film Loving in celebration of Beacon’s forthcoming book on the same topic…

  • The Prism of Race: W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and the Colored World of Cedric Dover [Silkey Review] Journal of American History Volume 103, Issue 3, December 2016 pages 822-823 DOI: 10.1093/jahist/jaw452 Sarah L. Silkey, Associate Professor of History Lycoming College, Williamsport, Pennsylvania The Prism of Race: W. E. B. Du…

  • That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia [Smithers Review] Journal of American History Volume 103, Issue 3, December 2016 pages 742-743 DOI: 10.1093/jahist/jaw364 That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia By Arica L.…

  • When Labels Don’t Matter: George Herriman and Krazy Kat The Beat 2016-12-14 Heidi MacDonald, Editor-In-Chief We’ve been writing a bit about Michael Tisserand’s comprehensive new biography of George Herriman, Krazy: A Life in Black and White, but last night I got to hear him talk about it at one of the stops on his mini…

  • ‘Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?’: Fiction by an Author Who Died Young Book Review The New York Times 2016-12-09 Morgan Jerkins WHATEVER HAPPENED TO INTERRACIAL LOVE? Stories By Kathleen Collins 175 pp. Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers. Paper, $15.99. Kathleen Collins Credit Douglas Collins Kathleen Collins’s short story collection, “Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?” opens with a monologue.…