If We Want Diverse Books, We Need Diverse MFA Programs Recently, in the New Yorker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz described his experience in his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing program: His first year, he almost dropped out because it “was too white.” States Diaz: “I was a person of color in a workshop […]
How To Hear Music Grow up with music—Sam & Dave and Dionne Warwick, The Temptations, The Supremes. MC Hammer, Michael Jackson, Teena Teena, Boys II Men. As a kid dance the electric slide with your cousins at weddings, and then, once you’ve moved south with your parents, re-learn. This time with a grape vine, the […]
Afro-Puerto Ricans encompass a dual heritage that provides a rich and unique cultural perspective. “Now We Will Be Happy” (University of Nebraska Press, $16.95) is a prize-winning collection of stories about Afro-Puerto Ricans, U.S. mainland-born Puerto Ricans and displaced native Puerto Ricans who are living between spaces while attempting to navigate the unique culture that […]
“I write first and foremost because the stories I grew up reading in school bore no resemblance to world of my family and my community. Those stories did not tell about the way the sun fell on my grandmother’s hands as she handed me my fresh bread and butter breakfast every morning or the smell […]
joyland south Waiting LATOYA WATKINS Vashti read the bear policy posted at the start of the trail twice before she decided to walk with us. She made one command. “If we gone do this shit, y’all can’t pull out no snacks, no water, no nothing. Ain’t no bear bout to fuck with me. Y’all asses […]
THE ETIQUETTE OF POLICE BRUTALITY[1] (AN AUTOPSY[2]) By Rion Amilcar Scott Go ahead. Smack him one. He expects it so it would be rude not to. Besides, look at him giving you a dehumanizing stare[3]. How dare he look at you in that manner? He thinks he’s better than you. Approach in such a way […]
