I DIDN’T KNOW MUCH about Robert Irwin’s work when I wandered into the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden a few weeks ago. I knew that he was a contemporary of a few other artists I admire, James Turrell among them, and that he was the first artist to win a MacArthur Genius Grant in 1984, […]
A Beating, A Prayer After they took the body of my friend away, I lost my ability to move. They’d left the twisted sheet he hung himself with, still tied to the curtain rod. The noose taunted me, its wide mouth ready to claim another black body. My father thought the Word would save us. […]
When a Character Returns Edward P. Jones connected recurring characters through his short stories, providing a blueprint for one writer. From Catapult Woodrow and Rita Cunningham’s fifteen-year-old daughter Elaine left home after arguing with her father about the boys she entertained in the house while her parents were away. I turned the pages of “A […]
2015 and 16 Kimbilio Faculty Member Jeffrey Renard Allen Interviewed by ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
THE BURDEN OF DIVERSITY Every year it was the same. The then Milwaukee Sentinel printed the pictures of all their summer interns who worked at the paper. The pictures were divided into two categories: Interns Minority Interns Each year, my picture, with the worst lighting imaginable, was displayed under the minority banner. I hated that […]
202 Checkmates by Rion Amilcar Scott (from the collection Insurrections) In my eleventh year, my father taught me defeat. I sat with my back pressed on that old, scratchy brown couch. Tom chased Jerry across the television screen and then the image dissolved into a white dot in the center. I turned to see my […]
Brand Yeezy To what extent can Kanye West continue to foreground the commercial components that make his art possible before we no longer consider him an artist at all? By Angela Flournoy What could we possibly not know about Kanye West? He has rapped, tweeted, blogged, and ranted about his feelings for years. His wife’s […]
Laws of Another Universe In 2008, right before my senior year of high school, my parents informed my sister and me that we would be moving in a month. Earlier that year, my father had lost his small plastics plant to the automotive crisis. I was old enough to know that moving under our circumstances […]
