Education is a powerful thing: A good education opens up the door for a wide array of opportunities and possibilities that are often otherwise unavailable. From job offers to opportunities to travel to simply meeting new people, everyone benefits from receiving an education. Now, more and more studies are showing the way that another demographic is also able to thrive on the benefits of a good education: Namely, prison inmates. While the majority of individuals who are incarcerated lack higher education, and many lack a high school diploma, more and more inmates are leaving prison with degrees, diplomas, or some sort of educational training. For inmates who receive an education during the course of their incarceration period, the results are often nothing short of amazing. Inmates who receive an education or some sort of job training in prison tout a heightened sense of worth, accomplishment, and responsibility. Furthermore, earning some sort of degree or diploma while in prison reduces the rate at which prisoners become reincarcerated drastically. In fact, according to the National Institute of Justice, prison-based education is the single most effective tool for lowering recidivism (the rate at which incarcerated individuals return to prison). No matter where you are in life, participating in educational programs can have a drastic impact.
In the digital age Hollywood casting decisions leaked from behind closed doors can instantly become fodder for public debate. And when the decision involves race and celebrity, the debate can get very heated.
Few have attacked Ms. Saldana for her virtues as an actress. Instead, much of the reaction has focused on whether Ms. Saldana was cast because she, unlike Simone, is light skinned and therefore a more palatable choice for the Hollywood film than a darker skinned actress.
“Hollywood and the media have a tendency to whitewash and lightwash a lot of stories, particularly when black actresses are concerned,” said Tiffani Jones, the founder of the blog Coffee Rhetoric. Ms. Jones wrote a blog post titled“(Mis)Casting Call: The Erasure of Nina Simone’s Image.”
“When is it going to be O.K. to not be the delicate looking ideal of what the media considers blackness to be?” Ms. Jones said in an interview.
Ms. Jones’s post linked to an online petition at the Web site Change.org that calls for Cynthia Mort, the writer and director of the film, and Jimmy Iovine, executive producer, to “replace Zoe Saldana with an actress who actually looks like Nina Simone.” The petition had gathered more than 2,100 supporters as of Wednesday morning. A representative for Ms. Saldana said the actress was not available for comment.
Controversies over casting are now common, with a result that choices for popular films like “The Hunger Games”become events in themselves. (Some viewers took to Twitter to express their anger over the casting of black actors in the roles of Rue, Cinna and Thresh.) But the proposed choice of Ms. Saldana to play Simone has reignited the conversation of colorism — Alice Walker’s term for discrimination based on gradations of skin color.
The disagreement over the Simone biography has resonated in part because of her place in music and social history. In addition to being a classically trained pianist, Simone, who died in 2003 at the age of 70, was a musical powerhouse known to her fans as the High Priestess of Soul who combined the styles of folk, jazz and blues with her deep, velvet voice.
She also became a major figure in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and a fixture at protests like the Selma to Montgomery March. In addition to her popular renditions of “I Loves You, Porgy,” and “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” she also wrote songs that addressed racism facing African-Americans, including “Mississippi Goddam,” composed in response to the killing of Medgar Evers, and “Four Women,” which described the histories and skin tones of four black women. Simone celebrated her looks, which were unconventional by show-business standards, with a personal style that included tribal inspired jewelry and hairdos.
Casting an actress who does not look like Simone is troubling, said Yaba Blay, a scholar of African and diaspora studies and the author of a forthcoming book called “(1)ne Drop: Conversations on Skin Color, Race, and Identity.”
“The power of her aesthetics was part of her power,” Dr. Blay said. “This was a woman who prevailed and triumphed despite her aesthetic.” Dark-skinned actresses, she added, are “already erased from the media, especially in the role of the ‘it girl’ or the love interest.”
The film is the brainchild of Ms. Mort, who wrote the script and will direct as well. Her credits include writing and producing television shows like “Rosanne” and “Will & Grace” and the 2007 film “The Brave One” starring Jodie Foster. The new film is scheduled to begin shooting in mid-October in Santa Barbara, Calif.
According to Ms. Mort, who is white, the film was not intended to be a biography in the strict sense, but instead “a love story about an artist’s journey unto herself,” she said.
“There’s a difference,” she added, “between telling a story that includes and involves emotion and experiences and doing a biopic — she was born here, she did this, she did that. That is also a great story, but that’s not what we’re telling in that kind of linear fashion.”
Ms. Mort said that she was still in the process of confirming whether Ms. Saldana would play Simone. David Oyelowo will play Simone’s companion and love interest, a composite character based on Simone’s manager and caretaker, Clifton Henderson.
The singer Mary J. Blige was first cast to play Simone until she had to bow out for what Ms. Mort described as “scheduling issues,” though Ms. Blige said publicly she had spent years preparing for the role. The rumors of Ms. Saldana’s casting prompted Simone’s daughter, Simone Kelly, to write a note to her mother’s fans on the official Nina Simone Facebook page. Ms. Kelly, who was born Lisa Celeste Stroud, said that the project was unauthorized, and that Simone’s estate had not been asked permission or been asked to participate in the film.
“My mother was raised at a time when she was told her nose was too wide, her skin was too dark,” Ms. Kelly said in an interview. “Appearance-wise this is not the best choice,” she added, referring to Ms. Saldana.
Ms. Kelly, who described herself as a fan of Ms. Saldana’s work, said she would have preferred to see actresses like Viola Davis or Kimberly Elise. She added that her mother’s own choice to play her was Whoopi Goldberg.
Ms. Kelly also took issue with the creative license taken by Ms. Mort’s script, particularly the story line that Simone had a romantic relationship with Mr. Henderson. In the Facebook post Ms. Kelly wrote: “Clifton Henderson was gay. He was not attracted to women. So, the truth is ... Nina Simone and Clifton Henderson NEVER had a relationship other than a business one.”
Ms. Mort described Mr. Henderson’s character as “a composite of many different loves and aspects of love in Nina’s life.”
Vic Bulluck, the executive director of the N.A.A.C.P Hollywood Bureau, believes the issue is the director, not the proposed star.
“Casting really is an issue of what actors are hot at any given moment, so the filmmakers can secure the funding to get the movie made,” he said. “I would question the filmmaker’s ability to tell the story more than I would question Zoe Saldana’s ability to embody the character.”
Dana Polan, a professor of cinema studies at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, said the issues of casting for a biopic are complicated, especially when it comes to involving the family of a celebrity. “Family don’t always know what’s best for the historical record, even if they may want to protect an image,” Mr. Polan said.
“It’s clear that Hollywood often operates from a model that lighter skin is more marketable than darker skin and this idea that anyone of color can play any character of color,” Mr. Polan said. “Allowing creative freedom is something we should encourage in filmmaking. On the other hand, Hollywood will claim creative freedom when its simply a matter of business as usual.”
Nina Simone… Pioneer, impactful, volatile, Black classical music genius, revolutionary, regal, and every bit the High Priestess of Soul ... if anybody is worthy of having her story brought to the big screen for posterity, it’d be Nina. Having to overcome racism and accused of not having the "right look” to appease the sensibilities of a certain segment of society; Nina was undaunted and has left a legacy that continues to resonate with her fans, lifelong and new.
When it was announced in 2010 that a Nina Simone biopic [based on a script by TV writer, Cynthia Mort] was in development and that singer, Mary J. Blige was slated to play her, the public's interest was piqued and they were a bit skeptical about whether Mary had the breadth of character to portray such a dynamic figure. And while Mary J. Blige emotes a similar feeling of euphonic consciousness in her own music, she doesn't necessarily harness the same sense of awareness or presence as Nina did. Nonetheless, some of us stayed abreast of the project, which was slated to start filming last year. Alas, it was stalled by financial setbacks, which delayed production and Mary J. Blige was forced to drop out. Folks were left to ponder who’d play Nina; bloggers and fans campaigned for the Black actresses and entertainers they thought would be more of an appropriate fit for the role – including Viola Davis, Lauryn Hill, India Arie and especially Adepero Oduye who starred, to wide acclaim, in Pariah – so many were left with feelings of confusion and dismay when Afro-Latina actress, Zoe Saldana was announced as Mary J. Blige’s replacement. With Saldana on-board to play Nina, suddenly the film’s financial woes were resolved and filming is slated to begin this year.
While Zoe Saldana is undoubtedly a capable actress and has amassed an impressive list of acting credentials; people are understandably agitated and of course the ubiquitous online petition has started circulating via Change.org, and chief among the petition's grievances…
Getting light complexioned actors to play the roles of dark complexioned historical figures is not only a sign of blatant disrespect to the persons they are portraying, but it is also disrespectful to their families, to history, to the people who look like the persons being whitewashed, and to the intelligence of the audience. For too long Hollywood has gotten away with this practice of revisionist history…
… And it’s a very valid gripe. Black actresses - particularly those with darker skin- often lament their experiences having to navigate the politics of an industry, that’s rarely willing to cast them in non-stereotypical roles, because [despite being attractive and immensely talented and right for the role] they don’t have the palatable “mainstream look" the Hollywood machine requires of some of its Black actresses; so they often lose plum roles to, what I call, the Halle Berry/Paula Patton appeal… and that destructive notion often places Black identified but racially ambiguous looking actresses on a pedestal as ideal representations of the Black female aesthetic. It’s a frustrating system of white-washing that incited people to chorus when biracial actress Jaqueline Fleming was cast as Harriet Tubman in Tim Burton's farcical [and poorly rated] fantasy-horror flick Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and when Thandie Newton was cast as an Igbo woman, for the film adaptation of Nigerian Author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's book, Half Of A Yellow Sun, earlier this year.
To note, Zoe Saldana is undoubtedly part of the African Diaspora and I’m not a gatekeeper for Black is, Black ain’t however, her being cast as Nina Simone sounds as random and egregious as Diana Ross’ portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues [Oscar nod notwithstanding… and yes I went there]. A large part of Nina Simone’s work and advocacy was prompted by the challenges she faced for having dark-skin and being rejected or criticized because of it. Nina was unapologetic about her brand of beauty and it was reflected in her demeanor and personal aesthetic. Commissioning an Afro-Latina actress who doesn't even come close to fitting the phenotype to evoke that struggle seems like another deliberate attempt at image erasure of Black women, by the media and entertainment industry… particularly since there are several other talented Black actresses who could’ve undoubtedly fulfilled the needs of the role.
Nina’s daughter Simone, released a carefully worded but eloquent statement via Facebook, about Zoe Saldana being cast to play her mother; in which she makes it clear that the film is an unauthorized version of Nina’s storied life…
Please note, this project is unauthorized. The Nina Simone Estate was never asked permission nor invited to participate. … If written, funded and CAST PROPERLY a movie about my mother will make an [sic] lasting imprint.
My vision of a movie about my mother includes SO many pivotal moments that are monumentally important towards relaying the journey of a woman whose journey began as a child prodigy born in North Carolina in the 1930's...too many to list here but, trust when I say the tale will inspire through the sheer sharing of HOW Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone, The High Priestess Of Soul renowned worldwide. How many of you know my mother's FIRST love was classical music? Do you know the hours she practiced preparing to audition for the Curtis Institute of Music only to be rejected because of the color of her skin? **After my mother made her transition I accepted a diploma from that very same institute with a speech she began writing but was unable to finish prior to her death. **
As a child, my mother was told her nose was too big and she was too dark yet she graduated valedictorian of her high school class - The Allen School for Girls - AND, skipped two grades. Nina was one of the most outspoken, prolifically gifted artists using the stage to speak out against racism during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's. Her friends included Betty Shabazz, Lorraine Hansberry (my godmother), Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Miriam Makeba, Stokely Carmichael, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings and Queens worldwide. Had she become a classical pianist, which was her dream....shattered, I doubt she would have found her true destiny. Nina Simone was a voice for her people and she spoke out HONESTLY, sang to us FROM HER SOUL, shared her joy, pain, anger and intelligence poetically in a style all her own. My mother stood up for justice, by any means necessary hahahaha YES, she was a revolutionary til the day she died. From Tragedy to Transcendence - MY VISION. The whole arc of her life which is inspirational, educational, entertaining and downright shocking at times is what needs to be told THE RIGHT WAY.
Tambay A. Obenson of the website Shadow and Act has been tracking this project closely and recently obtained and read a draft of the Nina script; writing…
“Ultimately, the project is meant to honor the passionate soul and sensitive nature – yet resilience- of an immense talent, who, despite her grand achievements, struggled with remorse, insecurity, feeling unloved and misunderstood. The film’s success really depends on the execution. Perhaps with the right performers, editing, cinematography and direction, this could be an interesting, compelling film. Without it, it could be a mess, suffer from a lack of substance and other ills, like, bad acting.”
While some petitioners are admittedly unfairly questioning the authenticity of Zoe Saldana’s race [the Black experience and Diaspora is universal], the fact still remains that casting her as Nina Simone seems like a decision based on gross superficiality and Hollywood executives’ disdain for a specific type of Black female beauty, let’s be real. It's a glaringly obvious slight that Zoe Saldana fans and the film's apologists refuse to grasp, in their defense of the casting choice.
That the film’s financial backing was immediately restored once Zoe was cast in the role, speaks volumes about how the Hollywood machine works when it comes to the type of Black actress they're willing to put their money behind, which is why I can't stress enough, the importance of supporting those films that recount our stories and history with honesty and integrity. And from my vantage point, this project doesn't seem as if it’s looking to honor or respect Nina’s legacy as much as the filmmakers and backers are trying to channel her story through what they deem to be an acceptable looking medium, rather than staying true to Nina's legacy in order to clean up at the box office and placate the gaze. It does a disservice to those young Black women and girls who grapple with some of the same issues Nina Simone did [primarily Colorism] and who are constantly told via different media platforms, they aren't beautiful in their skin.
A couple of days ago, I linked my post: (Mis)Casting Call: The Erasure of Nina Simone's Image to my tumblr page, and it was re-blogged by several people; a couple of whom took issue with the picture I used to accompany the post. To them, the image took precedence over the very valid issues I raised in the blog post. One tumblr-er noted...
"feeling some type of way about that particular picture of Zoe Saldanath that picture is rubbing me the wrong way its like [they] are trying to erase the fact that zoe is black zoe is a black women [sic] nothing is going to change that definitely not an over edited picture and im not feeling this oversexualized picture of zoe being paired with that picture of nina"
*sigh*
What I find most unsettling is that the stark differences between the two women, juxtaposed against each other, seems to make some folks uncomfortable. Why? There was no deliberate attempt to stir controversy on my part. I Googled an image of Zoe Saldana and Nina Simone, that was one of the pictures that popped up first, and I used it. In any event, I felt compelled to write a response to those tumblr notes trying to take me to task over the picture, excerpted below...
A couple of tumblr notes indicate that some people are discomfited by the fact that I used a specific picture of Zoe Saldana juxtaposed against one of Nina Simone. Firstly, it wasn't a deliberate attempt on my part when I inserted the accompanying image into the post. I was looking for a side-by-side/collage-d image of Zoe and Nina without having to create one myself, and looked on Google images to find one and that one was the one I chose. There was no rhyme or reason to my decision other than convenience.
Secondly, regarding the concern that there was an attempt to erase Zoe's race; if you read the article in its entirety, you quite possibly would have noted that I stated I was not a gatekeeper for"Black is, Black ain't" and noted that Zoe is undoubtedly part of the Diaspora. The picture that was chosen does not negate the fact, that Zoe being cast to play Nina Simone is wrong on many levels, and that Hollywood is notorious for trying to erase the image of Black actresses with keener features.
The picture of Zoe Saldana against the picture of Nina Simone doesn't quell any of the points I made about colorism or the seemingly random decision to cast Saldana to play Nina. Nowhere in my post did I question or deny Zoe's Blackness. I believe I stated she didn't share the same phenotype. Reading comprehension is a dying concept and skimming simply doesn't suffice if you're looking to refute something someone wrote. Focusing on the picture I used to accompany the larger issue at hand, is a derail as far as I'm concerned. And in the grand scheme of things, the issue isn't about Zoe, the picture, or her acting fortitude. It's about the media's and Hollywood's growing disdain for how some Black women look and dishonoring Nina's legacy and story by miscasting the role to play her.
Since weighing in about the controversial casting of Zoe Saldana, in the upcoming Nina Simone biopic, several blogs and media platforms have picked up on my blog piece regarding the matter and especially since my comments in Tanzina Vega's New York Times piece. There've been a couple of misconceptions, so I feel as if I need to offer some clarity as well as reiterate my stance on the matter...
First and most important, I actually was not the first person to broach this topic, as was suggested on one popular celebrity gossip blog. The Black independent film website, Shadow and Act was the first to present the information about the movie. The site's creator, Tambay A. Obenson initially made mention of the project in April, and he's been keeping tabs on the Nina Simone biopic since then, announcing and confirming in August that Zoe, was indeed, slated to play the title role. With that confirmation intact, I merely contributed my two cents, via a blog post, about the matter. I also did not circulate or start the petition to get Zoe Saldana removed from the project. In fact, a thorough read of my initial blog post, touches on the reasons why Zoe being cast as Nina Simone, are problematic. I never wrote that she wasn’t “Black enough”, I never mentioned her complexion, nor did I question her race. I said she didn’t share Nina’s phenotype. Nina Simone was a vigilant, unapologetic, mercurial, and amazing force, presented in a package that often isn’t preferred in the entertainment industry.
For those folks who insist that this inaccurate depiction of Nina’s life isn't an example of erasure or industry light-washing of the Black female aesthetic, and suggest that people are simply taking spiteful, stan-like digs at Zoe Saldana, miss the point completely. This is a systemic problem that's been rampant in Hollywood, the film making industry, and the overall media for far too long.
Media and entertainment machines continuously force-feed images of the Black women theyconsider to be acceptable enough to present to the mainstream. And while I agree wholeheartedly with those points suggesting that Black film-making and media industries need to continue to work towards creating infrastructures that relay our own stories, and that Black audiences need to support those efforts in droves, Hollywood and the media in general still should be held accountable for the covert disdain they seem to harbor for the "Afrocentric" aesthetic, and these conversations still need to be had. Zoe's race or acting fortitude is not the core issue. Moreover, Black Americans are aware that the African Diaspora spans the spectrum and includes Afro-Latinos, but it still doesn't negate the fact that Zoe doesn't share Nina's phenotype, and neither did Mary J. Blige (who was originally tapped to play the role), for that matter. The look is equally as important as the contents of the script, because Colorism is an issue that Nina fought against. Black actresses have a difficult enough time navigating the politics of the film industry, so when those who have darker-skin are pitted against bi-/multi-racial/racially ambiguous actresses who can "pass" for Black, to whom they lose plum roles, they continue to be cast in parts that relay narratives about Black female pathology: maids, the sassy invisible Black friend of some desired other actress, or the hyper-sexual ghetto queen as illustrated in the controversial Dutch filmAlleen maar nette Mensen-- "Only Decent People" [adapted from writer Robert Vuijse's book].
Viola Davis spoke of the difficulties Black actresses face in Hollywood, during Newsweek's Oscar roundtable discussion, but was dismissed as not being secure in her "hotness", as Black women sharing their stories of invisibility often are.
I've read arguments citing Thor and Hunger Games as examples of why Zoe cast as Nina Simone should suffice, since it somehow makes up for Idris Elba playing a Norse God. Nina wasn't some mythological character; she was a very REAL person who dealt with very REAL problems... racism and Colorism chief among them. To lead stories and blog posts with "People Think Zoe Saldana Isn't Black Enough and want her fired!" derails from the crux of the matter, because essentially and once again, it’s not aboutZoe, Zoe's race, or her acting abilities; in fact, it isn't even about light-skinned Black women vs dark-skinned Black women... an angle I believe media platforms are trying to stoke the flames of, for traffic. It's about the attempted erasure of a subset of Black women in the media, doing right by NINA and her legacy, and explaining exactly why it was important to offer the rightactress the opportunity to evoke her legacy.
Writer. Blogger. Coffee enthusiast... Tiff "Coffey" J is the snarky earnest creator of Coffee Rhetoric. Using her popularly distinctive writing voice, Tiff has written features for print publications and contributes to the popular (and provocative) news site, Intersection of Madness & Reality where she is amongst a talented and intrepid collective of diverse writers and bloggers.With the help of the City of Hartford Arts & Heritage Jobs Grant Program, Tiff has worked with the HartBeat Ensemble Theater Company; helping document the behind-the-scenes process for their 2011 main-stage play Flipside, via a series of narrative blog posts.
Tiff J was recently a panel participant at monthly social networking event, Tastemakers Soul Hartford [CT], where she spoke about the benefits of writers utilizing social media and Blogging platforms to promote and market their work. Coffee Rhetoric is a new media platform featuring personal anecdotes and op-eds about the myriad of human interest topics. Coffee Rhetoric is also a huge proponent of the Avant-garde and includes features about music, books, film, arts & culture.
General Orders No. 9. The hand that penned them was that of a trained attorney, but one who could never sit before the bar, because he was not a U.S. citizen. Despite that, he rose to the level of lieutenant colonel under the command of his old friend,General Ulysses S. Grant, and earned a brevet as brigadier general following the War. In Grant’s staff, he was known for his fine handwriting and law knowledge. Those skills were put to task as he not only helped draft Lee’s letters of surrender, but personally penned the formal copies.
Lee mistook him for a black man, but apologized upon realizing his error, saying,
“I am glad to see one real American here.”
The man was Ely Parker, born Hasanoanda, a sachem (or high chief) of the Seneca nation. Parker replied to Lee, suggesting a tone of reconciliation,
“We are all Americans, sir.”
Following the war, Parker finished his time in the military and was later appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs under Grant’s presidency, becoming the first Native American to hold the position.
DJ Spinna’s latest project shows off the amazing talents of Brooklyn based soul singer, Jose James. The Eccentric Movements of Jose James takes you on a musical journey thru James’ earlier works with sprinklings of music from his forthcoming Blue Note release. A couple of familiar favorites are blended effortlessly with the crooner’s eclectic mix of jazz funk and soul making this a sweet end of summer treat.
Tracklist: 1. Love Connection 2. Code 3. Park Bench People 4. Love 5. Come To My Door 6. Made For Love 7. It’s All Over 8. Save Your Love 9. Lay You Down 10. Trouble 11. Vanguard 12. Promise In Love 13. Detroit Loveletter 14. Sword – Gun 15. Velvet 16. Desire (Moodyman Remix) 17. Warriors 18. Warriors SBRKT Remix) 19. Tomorrow
In our latest VOV, we sat down with musician K’NAAN to talk about his unique journey from a young boy in Somalia to becoming a recording artist based in North America. He also shares his creative process and how he sees creativity in different instances in his life.
Creativity – no matter where you’re from or what you do – has the ability to shine a light on your journey in life. K’NAAN’s story true embodies this.
Johan and Esau bring out the big-feature-guns on the newly released “We OK” from their upcoming MTMTMK LP. The synth-flanked uplifter features vocals from K’naan, was co-written with Bruno Mars and boasts an addictive bright guitar chorus to seal the whole deal. Stream the track below, which premiered on NPR’s All Things Considered a minute ago. MTMTMK is due July 7 via Moshi Moshi/Cooperative Music. Catch the guys on their U.S. tour in August, dates below.
It’s more than words ... that is the motto of the Melville Poetry Festival this year. Its Festival of the Poetic takes place from 12 to 14 October, and will include everything that is poetic about our lives, from readings to art works with words, and music of all sorts.
All in Seventh Street, the place to be to get your cultural fix.
A programme is being put together under the theme "Festival of the Poetic" and will be available at the website in a few weeks. The idea is to present items of poetry as well those showing an overlap with other genres, especially the visual arts and music. An open mike will accommodate anybody who just wants to pitch up on the day.
The Grub Street National Book Prize is awarded once annually to an American writer outside New England publishing his or her second, third, fourth (or beyond...) book. First books are not eligible. Writers whose primary residence is Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut or Rhode Island are also not eligible.
Each winner receives a cash award of $5,000.
The winner will read from his/her work and lead a craft class in downtown Boston as part of the Muse and the Marketplace literary conference. All travel and accommodation expenses will be paid by Grub Street.
Though Grub Street's top criterion is the overall literary merit of the work submitted, the award committee especially encourages writers publishing with small presses, writers of short story collections, and writers of color to apply. We also want the award to benefit writers for whom a trip to Boston will likely expand their readership in a meaningful way.
Postmark Deadline for the 2013 Non-Fiction Prize: October 15, 2012.
Application Requirements
(1) Two copies of the author's most recent or upcoming book, in bound galleys or final form, published between January 1, 2012 and May 1, 2013. (Important: the hardcover or paperback original must be available to booksellers by May 1, 2013. Books available solely in electronic form are not eligible. Self-published books are not eligible. Paperbacks are not eligible if hardcover was published before January 1, 2012.)
(2) Curriculum vitae
(3) 500-word synopsis of the proposed craft class
(4) $30 tax-deductible donation/reading fee** made out to Grub Street, Inc.
**If the book is published by a press with annual sales under $5 million, the submission fee is waived.
(5) Send all materials to: Grub Street Book Prize in Non-Fiction; 162 Boylston Street, 5th Floor, Boston, MA 02116.
Other Important Information about the 2013 Non-Fiction Prize
(1) The winner will be asked to be in Boston the weekend of May 3-5, 2013 to give a public reading from their book and to present a 1.25-hour craft class at Grub Street's 2013 Muse and the Marketplace literary conference. Inability to attend at least one day of the conference may result in forfeiture of the prize.
(2) Publishers may submit books on behalf of authors, but applications must include all materials above in order to be eligible.
(3) Eligible non-fiction books include: Memoir, any form of narrative/creative non-fiction, or autobiography. Not Eligible: Self-Help, “prescriptive” non-fiction, cookbooks, "pure" history, literary criticism, philosophy or textbooks.
(4) Winner will be notified on or before December 15th, 2012.
For more information about Grub Street and this year's Book Prize, call 617.695.0075 or send an email to chris@grubstreet.org. Please send all postal mail applications and inquiries to: 162 Boylston Street, 5th Floor, Boston, MA 02116.
An award of approximately $52,000 is given annually to a U.S. poet for a year of travel and study abroad. Publication is not required, but recent winners have been published poets. Submit two copies of either 40 pages of poetry or one published book and 20 pages of poetry and a curriculum vitae. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for the required entry form and complete guidelines by October 1; the deadline is October 15.
Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, c/o Laura Reidy, Choate, Hall & Stewart, 2 International Place, Boston, MA 02110.
A Columbia graduate student and his adviser have authenticated the student’s discovery of an unknown manuscript of a 1941 novel by Claude McKay, a leading Harlem Renaissance writer and author of the first novel by a black American to become a best seller.
The Columbia graduate student Jean-Christophe Cloutier, left, with Prof. Brent Hayes Edwards. / Robert Caplin for The New York Times
The manuscript, “Amiable With Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem,” was discovered in a previously untouched university archive and offers an unusual window on the ideas and events (like Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia) that animated Harlem on the cusp of World War II. The two scholars have received permission from the McKay estate to publish the novel, a satire set in 1936, with an introduction about how it was found and its provenance verified.
McKay, a Jamaican-born writer and political activist who died in 1948, at 58 (though some biographies say 57), influenced a generation of black writers, including Langston Hughes. His work includes the 1919 protest poem “If We Must Die,” (quoted by Winston Churchill) and “Harlem Shadows,” a 1922 poetry collection that some critics say ushered in the Harlem Renaissance. He also wrote the 1928 best-selling novel “Home to Harlem.” But his last published fiction during his lifetime was the 1933 novel “Banana Bottom.”
“This is a major discovery,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard University scholar, who was one of three experts called upon to examine the novel and supporting research. “It dramatically expands the canon of novels written by Harlem Renaissance writers and, obviously, novels by Claude McKay.
“More important, because it was written in the second half of the Harlem Renaissance, it shows that the renaissance continued to be vibrant and creative and turned its focus to international issues — in this case the tensions between Communists, on the one hand, and black nationalists, on the other, for the hearts and minds of black Americans,” said Mr. Gates, the director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard.
This literary detective story began in the summer of 2009, when Jean-Christophe Cloutier, a doctoral candidate in English and comparative literature, was working as an intern in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia. He was going through more than 50 boxes of materials belonging to Samuel Roth, a kind of literary pariah who died in 1974 and is best known for being the appellant in a famous obscenity case in the 1950s.
Mr. Roth is also known for publishing work without permission, including excerpts from James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and editions of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” by D. H. Lawrence. Mr. Roth attended Columbia, and his family donated his collection to the university.
No one knew of a connection between Mr. Roth and McKay, Mr. Cloutier said, as he came upon the roughly 300-page double-spaced manuscript, bound between cardboardlike covers bearing the novel’s title and McKay’s name. He also found two letters from McKay to Mr. Roth about possibly ghostwriting a novel to be called “Descent Into Harlem,” about an Italian immigrant who settles in Harlem.
The manuscript of the novel by McKay that was found. / Robert Caplin for The New York Times
“Amiable” is a different story, though, rife with political intrigue, romance, seedy nightclubs and scenes of black intellectual and artistic life in Harlem during the Great Depression.
Mr. Cloutier quickly took his discovery to Brent Hayes Edwards, his dissertation adviser and an expert in black literature. Mr. Edwards, a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia, knew that McKay had published three novels during his lifetime (including “Banjo,” in 1929.) A novella, “Harlem Glory: A Fragment Of Aframerican Life,” was published posthumously).
But he and Mr. Cloutier immediately found in “Amiable” themes that recurred across McKay’s work, like Communism and labor strikes in Harlem, and characters, like the real-life labor leader Sufi Abdul Hamid. The term “Aframerican,” which McKay used to refer to black people in the Western Hemisphere, also appeared in “Amiable.”
Mr. Cloutier and Mr. Edwards gathered additional evidence by rummaging through archives at libraries around the country, including at Yale, Indiana University, Emory University and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, part of the New York Public Library (which manages the McKay estate).
They ended up amassing a mountain of archival and circumstantial evidence pointing to McKay’s authorship. But it was the extensive correspondence between McKay and his friend Max Eastman, the writer, political activist and avid supporter of the Harlem Renaissance, that ultimately convinced them that “Amiable” was indeed McKay’s, they said.
“The irrefutable archival evidence we have is when Eastman directly quotes from the novel,” Mr. Cloutier said. “McKay sent him pages, all from the summer of 1941 and a bit later.” (They also found letters referring to a contract between McKay and E. P. Dutton to write the novel.)
The authentication of the novel is “scholarly gold,” said William J. Maxwell, the editor of “Complete Poems: Claude McKay.” Its mocking portraits of Communists show McKay’s decisive break with Communism and his effort to turn his political evolution into art, said Mr. Maxwell, a professor of English and African-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.
Moreover, while the flowering of arts known as the Harlem Renaissance obsessively documented black life in the 1920s, he said, far less is known about the period of the 1930s, focused on in “Amiable.”
Many scholars believe that the Harlem Renaissance’s creative energy had pretty much run out by the late 1930s. But Mr. Edwards said he believed that “Amiable” would eventually be recognized “as the key political novel of the black intellectual life in New York in the late 1930s.”
McKay represents the Communists as amiable with big teeth, he said, but they end up being a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“I cannot think of another novel that gives us such a rich and multilayered portrayal of black life,” Mr. Edwards continued. “There are scenes with artists in salons, in nightclubs, in queer nightclubs. It has almost a documentary aspect.”
Despite his moment in the spotlight, Mr. Cloutier is still in the middle of his dissertation, which he expects to complete in 2013 or 2014. Its title? “Archival Vagabonds: 20th Century American Fiction and the Archives in Novelistic Practice.” And the McKay manuscript remains where Mr. Cloutier found it, now archived in Box 29, Folders 7 and 8, of the Samuel Roth papers.
McKay, Claude (15 Sept. 1890-22 May 1948), poet, novelist, and journalist, was born Festus Claudius McKay in Sunny Ville, Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, the son of Thomas Francis McKay and Hannah Ann Elizabeth Edwards, farmers. The youngest of eleven children, McKay was sent at an early age to live with his oldest brother, a schoolteacher, so that he could be given the best education available. An avid reader, McKay began to write poetry at the age of ten. In 1906 he decided to enter a trade school, but when the school was destroyed by an earthquake he became apprenticed to a carriage and cabinetmaker; a brief period in the constabulary followed. In 1907 McKay came to the attention of Walter Jekyll, an English gentleman residing in Jamaica who became his mentor, encouraging him to write dialect verse. Jekyll later set some of McKay's verse to music. By the time he immigrated to the United States in 1912, McKay had established himself as a poet, publishing two volumes of dialect verse, Songs of Jamaica (1912) and Constab Ballads (1912).
Having heard favorable reports of the work of Booker T. Washington, McKay enrolled at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama with the intention of studying agronomy; it was here that he first encountered the harsh realities of American racism, which would form the basis for much of his subsequent writing. He soon left Tuskegee for Kansas State College in Manhattan, Kansas. In 1914 a financial gift from Jekyll enabled him to move to New York, where he invested in a restaurant and married his childhood sweetheart, Eulalie Imelda Lewars. Neither venture lasted a year, and Lewars returned to Jamaica to give birth to their daughter. McKay was forced to take a series of menial jobs. He was finally able to publish two poems, "Invocation" and "The Harlem Dancer," under a pseudonym in 1917. McKay's talent as a lyric poet earned him recognition, particularly from Frank Harris, editor of Pearson's magazine, and Max Eastman, editor of The Liberator, a socialist journal; both became instrumental in McKay's early career.
As a socialist, McKay eventually became an editor at The Liberator, in addition to writing various articles for a number of left-wing publications. During the period of racial violence against blacks known as the Red Summer of 1919, McKay wrote one of his best-known poems, the sonnet, "If We Must Die," an anthem of resistance later quoted by Winston Churchill during World War II. "Baptism," "The White House," and "The Lynching," all sonnets, also exemplify some of McKay's finest protest poetry. The generation of poets who formed the core of the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes and Countée Cullen, identified McKay as a leading inspirational force, even though he did not write modern verse. His innovation lay in the directness with which he spoke of racial issues and his choice of the working class, rather than the middle class, as his focus.
McKay resided in England from 1919 through 1921, then returned to the United States. While in England, he was employed by the British socialist journal,Workers' Drednought, and published a book of verse, Spring in New Hampshire, which was released in an expanded version in the United States in 1922. The same year, Harlem Shadows, perhaps his most significant poetry collection, appeared. McKay then began a twelve-year sojourn through Europe, the Soviet Union, and Africa, a period marked by poverty and illness. While in the Soviet Union he compiled his journalistic essays into a book, The Negroes in America, which was not published in the United States until 1979. For a time he was bouyed by the success of his first published novel, Home to Harlem (1928), which was critically acclaimed but engendered controversy for its frank portrayal of the underside of Harlem life.
His next novel, Banjo: A Story without a Plot (1929), followed the exploits of an expatriate African-American musician in Marseilles, a locale McKay knew well. This novel and McKay's presence in France influenced Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, and other pioneers of the Negritude literary movement that took hold in French West Africa and the West Indies. Banjo did not sell well. Neither did Gingertown (1932), a short story collection, or Banana Bottom (1933). Often identified as McKay's finest novel, Banana Bottom tells the story of Bita Plant, who returns to Jamaica after being educated in England and struggles to form an identity that reconciles the aesthetic values imposed upon her with her appreciation for her native roots.
McKay had moved to Morocco in 1930, but his financial situation forced him to return to the United States in 1934. He gained acceptance to the Federal Writers Project in 1936 and completed his autobiography, A Long Way from Home, in 1937. Although no longer sympathetic toward communism, he remained a socialist, publishing essays and articles in The Nation, the New Leader, and the New York Amsterdam News. In 1940 McKay produced a nonfiction work, Harlem: Negro Metropolis, which gained little attention but has remained an important historical source. Never able to regain the stature he had achieved during the 1920s, McKay blamed his chronic financial difficulties on his race and his failure to obtain academic credentials and associations.
McKay never returned to the homeland he left in 1912. His became a U.S. citizen in 1940. High blood pressure and heart disease led to a steady physical decline, and in a move that surprised his friends, McKay abandoned his lifelong agnosticism and embraced Catholicism. In 1944 he left New York for Chicago, where he worked for the Catholic Youth Organization. He eventually succumbed to congestive heart failure in Chicago. His second autobiography, My Green Hills of Jamaica, was published posthumously in 1979.
Assessments of McKay's lasting influence vary. To McKay's contemporaries, such as James Weldon Johnson, "Claude McKay's poetry was one of the great forces in bringing about what is often called the 'Negro Literary Renaissance.' " While his novels and autobiographies have found an increasing audience in recent years, modern critics appear to concur with Arthur P. Davis that McKay's greatest literary contributions are found among his early sonnets and lyrics. McKay ended A Long Way from Home with this assessment of himself: "I have nothing to give but my singing. All my life I have been a troubadour wanderer, nourishing myself mainly on the poetry of existence. And all I offer here is the distilled poetry of my experience."
Bibliography
Photo by James L. Allen
The bulk of McKay's papers is located in the James Weldon Johnson Collection at Yale University. Numerous letters are widely scattered; some sources include the Schomburg and H. L. Mencken collections at the New York City Public Library; the William Stanley Brathwaite Papers at Harvard University; the Alain Locke Papers at Howard University; the NAACP Papers in the Library of Congress; the Eastman Papers at the University of Indiana, Bloomington; the Rosenwald Fund Papers at Fisk University; and the Countee Cullen Papers at Dillard University. Selected Poems of Claude McKay, an extensive collection, was published in 1953. American Mercury, The Crisis, The Liberator, and Opportunity are among the wide range of periodicals in which McKay's poems, articles, book reviews, and short stories appear. Early poems can be found in the Jamaican newspapers Jamaica Times and Kingston Daily Gleaner. Late poems appear inCatholic Worker. Extensive bibliographies can be found in several unpublished dissertations.
Published full-length biographical and critical studies include Wayne F. Cooper, Claude McKay: Rebel Sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance, a Biography(1987); Tyrone Tillary, Claude McKay: A Black Poet's Struggle for Identity (1992); and James R. Giles, Claude McKay (1976). Stephen H. Bronz, Roots of Negro Racial Consciousness: The 1920s, Three Harlem Renaissance Authors (1964); Addison Gayle, Claude McKay: The Black Poet at War (1972); and Wayne F. Cooper, ed., The Passion of Claude McKay (1973), are also useful bibliographic and biographical resources. An obituary appears in the New York Times, 24 May 1948.
Source: http://www.anb.org/articles/16/16-01105.html; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000. Access Date: Wed Mar 21 11:26:06 2001 Copyright (c) 2000 American Council of Learned Societies. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
There's a direct relationship between how much money the Golden State spends on prisons and how much it spends on higher education, according to a report put out by the non-partisan public policy group California Common Sense. When one goes up, the other goes down.
And, at least in California, the former has been going up a lot more than the latter.
Since 1980, higher education spending has decreased by 13 percent in inflation adjusted dollars, whereas spending on California's prisons and associated correctional programs has skyrocketed by 436 percent. The state now shells out more money from its general fund for the prison system than the higher education system. (When combined with K-12 education, the state's overall education spending dwarfs its prison expenditures.)
Fifty-five percent of the growth of corrections spending is the result of the state simply putting more people in jail. Over the past three decades, the number of inmates in California facilities has increased eight times faster than size of the overall population.
The report notes that, while the average salaries for employees of the state's world-renowned higher education system have stagnated or even dropped with regard to inflation, prison guards have seen sustained salary increases. Correctional officers in California typically make somewhere between 50 and 90 percent more than comparable jobs in the rest of the country.
California Correctional Peace Officers Association spokesperson Ryan Sherman defended the high salaries. "Buying a house in the Bay Area is extremely expensive. There's a number of prisons in the Bay Area and so the officers need to be compensated appropriately in California," he explained to NBC Bay Area, noting that many prison employees have taken pay cuts in recent years. "[California Highway Patrol] officers are paid more than correctional officers and it's the same standards, same hiring practices they go through, so I don't know that they’re paid too much. I think they actually deserve more."
Prison guards aren't the only part of the state's penal system that has gotten considerably more expensive over time.
A 2009 investigation by the state's Legislative Analyst's Office noted that, over the previous decade, state spending per inmate has increased by two-thirds, largely due to a federal court order to improve prisoner health care, increased spending on rehab programs and the aforementioned employee compensation increases.
California's general fund is the sole source of state-level funding for its prison system, while special funds derived from specific funding sources are earmarked for channeling money into its education system. Due to the state's ongoing budget crisis, those special funds are increasingly being borrowed from to close the ever-growing hole in the general fund budget.
The report states that in 1980, over two-thirds of all the money spent on secondary education came from the state government. At present, that percentage has shrunk to about one-fourth.
As a result, the higher education system has been forced to rely more heavily on student tuition. In 2009, mass student protests erupted when the University of California's Board of Regents voted to hike tuition by 32 percent. The following year saw another eight percent tuition increase.
A 20 percent hike has been threatened for the next school year if California voters reject the tax measure pushed by Governor Jerry Brown.
Brown has also instituted a program called "realignment" designed to both cut the state's prison spending and comply with a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court ruling mandating the California get serious about solving its dire prison overcrowding population.
Realignment is designed to shift non-serious, non-violent, non-sexual convicts (read: drug offenders) to county jails, instead of state penitentiaries, where local sheriffs have significantly more freedom in what methods they're able to employ.
Officials hope that realignment with not only improve the conditions inside California's jails, but also decrease their overall cost.
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