Dr. Omekongo Dibinga
Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir
A gripping tale of personal revolution by a man who wen…
Skin in the game: hidden asymmetries in daily life
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Black…
Take Your Place: Rhetorical Healing and Black Womanhood in Tyler Perry’s Films
The unparalleled commercial sucessess that gospel-playwright-turned-screenwriter Tyler Perry has attained through converting his stage plays into films that depict black women overcoming personal crises raises questions about the intent behind his seemingly feminist-inspired representations of black womanhood. Through an analysis of the rhetoric of healing in Perry’s first two films, this essay reveals one of the suppressive pedagogical functions of Perry’s representation of black womanhood. Rhetorics of healing are a series of persuasive messages, performances, and literacy acts that writers deploy in order to convince readers that redressing or preventing crises requires them to follow the curriculum for ideological, communicative, and behavioral transformation that the writer considers essential to wellness. In Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea’s Family Reunion, Perry’s representation of rhetorical healing constructs black Christian women as students who must learn prescribed attitudes and behaviors to achieve, or remain in, states of wellness, and these lessons reinforce conservative gender ideologies and reify patriarchal constructions of the family and home. Given black women’s historically tenuous relationships with representations of themselves and their families in mainstream film, and given the ways in which their labor in the home is simultaneously desired and exploited, the popularity of Perry’s films does not suggest that his representations of healing foster black women’s self-empowerment. Rather, his popularity points to a moment where black women’s pain is a commodity and their instructive journeys to wellness are an exploited site where writers can carry out their own agendas.
Being Black: Selections from "Soledad Brother" by Georg…
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Black Futures
Check out Black Futures - <b><b>“A literary experience unlike any I’ve had in recent memory . . . a blueprint for this moment and the next, for where Black folks have been and where they might be going.”—<i>The New York Times Book Review</i> (Editors’ Choice)</b><br><br></b><i><b>What does it mean to be Black and alive right now?</b></i><br><br>Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work—images, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more—to tell the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today. The book presents a succession of startling and beautiful pieces that generate an entrancing rhythm: Readers will go from conversations with activists and academics to memes and Instagram posts, from powerful essays to dazzling paintings and insightful infographics.<br><br> In answering the question of what it means to be Black and alive, <i>Black Futures</i> opens a prismatic vision of possibility for every reader. by Jenna Wortham and Kimberly Drew on Bookshop.org UK!
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Oakland is a Vibe: Blackness, Cultural Framings and Emancipations of The Town
Author(s): Heitz, Kaily | Advisor(s): Scott Lewis, Jovan | Abstract: In this dissertation, I examine the ways that developers and Black community organizers in Oakland, California, utilize a situated concept of Black culture to produce value in the city. This value is constituted by a politics of Blackness rooted both in racial capitalism, shifting structures of community care, and their affective articulations. The affective qualities of Black Oakland – which includes a sense of relationality, creativity, and resistance – are understood colloquially as “vibe.” While representations of vibe are mobilized by both developers and community organizations to respectively advance and resist gentrification, I argue that the vibe of the city is constituted by a Black sense of place that cannot be reproduced through capitalist representations of cultural value alone. This study of vibe presents an opportunity to take seriously the invitation of Black geographic scholarship to work at the intersection of poetics and historical materialism by exploring relationality as a site that coproduces racialized space and experience. Where developers leverage notions of vibe to generate value through private investment, Black organizers utilize such representations in order to reclaim the physical space necessary to the very production of vibe. The latter strategy is, I suggest, an enactment of what I call “emancipatory framing,” in which hegemonic framing is mobilized in order to create alternative spaces for liberatory praxes. This dissertation explores vibe and emancipatory framing at three different scales: the Black body, the independent business, and the grassroots collective. I conclude that vibe as a material and metaphorical asset of Blackness, is at the root of contestations over place, and sometimes contradictory imaginaries of freedom.
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Podcast Episode · The Ezra Klein Show · 02/03/2026 · 1h 31m
American Babylon
A gripping portrait of black power politics and the struggle for civil rights in postwar Oakland
United Black Library
Discover, read, and save Black History and African Diaspora content—ebooks, lectures, documentaries, and films. Access a vast catalog, subscribe or purchase content, and join a community of learners.
Black Star Network | News, Culture & Commentary by Roland Martin
lack Star Network delivers daily news, politics, culture, and commentary from Roland S. Martin and top Black thought leaders.
About — NBUF Website
To struggle for self-determination, liberation and power for Black people in the United States.
I wanted to be Anthony Bourdain—until I met him.
CW: suicide, suicidal ideation, addiction
