It's titled simply Chocó, a film set in Colombia, which centers on the struggles of a 27-year-old mother of 2 (the titular Chocó), working a poorly-paid job in a gold mine, living in a tiny wooden hut, who's married to a reckless and abusive man named Everlides, a marimba player who gambles away their life savings.
Further...
... She truly believes that things will get better. But then she loses her job, her daughter wants her birthday cake and Everlides spends the last of their savings. Chocó finds herself standing in the village shop she passes every day and in front of which Everlides drinks away all their money and loses at dominoes. She looks at the colourful cakes on the counter. You won’t get anything for nothing here, the fat shopkeeper reminds her. If you want a cake, I want you.
The film is producer and screenwriter Jhonny Hendrix Hinestroza’s directorial debut.
It's scheduled to screen at the Berlinale next month in its Panorama section. S&A won't be at Berlin this year unfortunately; though I'd love to be there, because the lineup thus far is enticing, and there's a nice representation of Diasporic films scheduled to screen; maybe next year.
Check out a 7-minute behind-the-scenes preview of Chocó below (sorry, it's not subtitled in English; but I'm loving the images):
No sooner had the announcement been made that the film adaptation of Nigerian author Ngozie Adichie’s award-winning novel Half Of A Yellow Sun was to star Thandie Newton, than a petition rang out. By now many people, mostly of Igbo or other Nigerian origin, have complained that the casting of Thandie Newton as the book’s Igbo female protagonist Olanna, is a slight they are not willing to suffer. The 2006 book tells the story of the Nigerian-Biafran War of 1967-1970, in which over a million people were killed or died of starvation. To be fair we do not know yet what role Thandie has accepted, but many are outraged that she could possibly be playing the role of Olanna.
The director, Nigerian novelist and playwright Biyi Bandele has a great cast locked into the film, including Nigerian Brit Chiwetel Ejiofor. Surely Bandele could have a say in who plays the Nigerian woman? Why did he not insist on a Nigerian actress if not an Igbo one?
As the petition’s originator, Ashley Akunna, said in the comments section on Clutch:
“This petition is about authenticity. Igbo people come in all complexions. However, the majority are dark brown in complexion. Thandie Newton is a wonderfully talented actress. However, I would be lying to you, if I said I know anyone in my village who looks like her. I have traveled all across Nigeria, from Abuja to Calabar, and Thandie Newton is not an accurate portrayal of what Igbo woman look like. Not in the slightest. Hollywood is known for giving preferential treatment to black female actors of a lighter hue. And that is definitely being displayed here with the casting of Thandie Newton. 365 days out of the year Africans are portrayed in media as some of the darkest people you will ever come across. However, when a role requires a beautiful Igbo actress, they want to cast a bi-racial woman who looks nothing like the people she is supposed to be playing. That is nonsense. Of course I would love an Igbo woman to have this part. But frankly any African woman who fits the description of what an AUTHENTIC IGBO WOMAN looks like will fit the bill. Don’t give me a watered down version of my ancestors and accept me to be happy. It is an insult to Igboland. FULL STOP.”
We clearly shouldn’t take crumbs and call it a three-course meal, as someone else commented.
Clearly the issue is a deep-seated one with us black women. We want to see media representations of ourselves – fair ones, not ones about us being beautiful or having full agency only when we’re fair, light-skinned or bi-racial. Which is basically how it’s worked out thus far. There are not many dark-skinned actresses outside of Nollywood that don’t get a raw deal. We were given a template by others, and we are expected to fully adhere to it. The shame. We have to be represented accurately, especially if the impetus for such representations is from ourselves!
Which is why I support the petition and hope that the production company for Chimamanda’s film strongly reconsiders Thandie Newton for the role, and puts in a Nigerian, darker-skinned actress if not an Igbo woman. I am sure this would be easy to do as there is a wealth of talent in Nigeria. We need to see other faces besides the well-known ones from the West. Cast someone well-known in Nigeria and trust me that movie will make bank like nobody’s business. Because Nigeria is the second-biggest film industry in the world (after India) it makes sense to take on the viable marketing scheme of a Nigerian face, rather than a British-Zimbabwean one, much as we adore Thandie.
It’s interesting how this works – you write a book, it is your IP, but through birth, it also belongs to the people you belong to and wrote about. The book is now the cultural heritage of the Igbo people. I wonder if the author takes no issue with who portrays one of her characters. Is this not part of the danger of a single story about Africans or black people that she herself warned of? We are multi-hued, let the contemporary portrayals of Africans finally reflect that.
Ogochukwu Nzewi, an Igbo woman living in South Africa, weighed in:
“There must have been prior engagement with her for her to be happy with the casting – it’s not something she’s hearing about now. Many factors contribute to make a movie, including financiers. She may have had to compromise, though unfavourable to many of us. It may be the excitement of having her novel made into a movie. There’s no rush for it to be made a movie. She should have had more editorial control, and put her foot down on casting. It should be as close to the novel as possible and not be compromised. Also, it’s the same old London movie mafia – where are the new faces? We have brilliant Nigerian actresses, even those living in London!”
“We don’t know who Thandie’s playing – but the question remains – how much can we compromise? We continue to have these voices, representing us. And they are not always close to our truths.”
Last November, Sister Fa took the Freedom to Create Main Prize in 2011 for her devoted work to raising awareness on the traumatic and harmful consequences of female genital mutilation. The Freedom to Create Prize celebrates the courage and creativity of artists, and the positive influence of their work to promote social justice and inspire the human spirit.
Born and raised in Dakar, Senegal, Sister Fa first began rapping in 2000, and released her first solo-album in August 2005. Her Education sans Excision (Education without Cutting) tour through Senegal was inspired by the wish to motivate change. Working in cooperation with the NGO Tostan, Sister Fa has inspired the inhabitants of her home village, Thionck Essyl, to officially abandoned the practice of cutting young girls.
She continues to use her art and influence to work towards the end of this destructive practice. Earlier this month, she met with artists to provide a course on the subject of FGC. The artists are working together on a music compilation, and will be part of the tour planned for late spring this year in Senegal which is bringing awareness to the need to abandon the practice of FGC and the impact that this practice has on the rights of women and girls.
“Sister Fa is an inspiring example of how many artists around the world are using their talent to stand up for social justice and in defence of human dignity.” – Freedom to Create
Sister Fa will be playing her first ever UK show on Feb 6, 2012 at Union Chapel Bar in London, where she will be celebrating the progress made to date to end Female Genital Cutting on the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGC.
Reality check: There are more slaves in the world today than were taken from Africa in the four centuries of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade--over 27 million. Of those, two million are children exploited in the commercial sex trade.
Human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, with annual profits exceeding that of ExxonMobil ($32 billion from sex trafficking alone). The average girl forced into prostitution is 13. Many are younger than that.
As a father, I am haunted by this thought. Even as I type, kids are being sold for sex in cities across the East--Tel Aviv, Dubai, Mumbai, Bangkok, Tokyo and Phnom Penh. In 12 hours, the same will be true in the West--Amsterdam, Rio, Toronto, Atlanta, Dallas and Portland. In the underworld, a girl is a money tree. Unlike a kilo of cocaine or a cache of AK-47s, a girl can be sold a dozen times a night for years. Siddharth Kara at Harvard estimates that a stable of four girls in a Western European apartment brothel can net a pimp an annual income of $300,000.
We in the West have a hard time believing that this is really happening, that the forcible exploitation of humans for profit is not only alive and well in the 21st century but worse than ever before. We are taught in history class that slavery ended after the Civil War. This is partially true: our ancestors defeated one incarnation of the monster. But the instinct of people to buy and sell other people for economic gain did not die with the 13th Amendment. It went underground and metastasized, waiting for conditions to ripen again. Then in the 1990s, slavery exploded into new life, fueled by globalization, the post-Cold-War economic vacuum, the Internet, and rising demand for cheap commercial sex and labor.
Four years ago, I was an attorney working in commercial litigation. If you had asked me how well I understood human trafficking, I would have told you about Svay Pak, Cambodia and the Western sex tourists who traveled there to abuse children. I would have told you about the heroic team of investigators, lawyers and social workers from the International Justice Mission working in the red light areas of India to rescue children from pimps and traffickers. But if you had asked me how well I understood the trade in the United States, I would have had little to say. Sensitive as I was to justice issues, I knew almost nothing about slavery in my own country.
The first stage of my awakening occurred in the spring of 2008. Interestingly, it was art that made trafficking personal, a film that brought it home in my heart. I started talking about it with my wife, scratching the surface of the world I thought I knew, and learning how profoundly I was in the dark. My wife's response to trafficking was even more visceral than my own. The truth about forced prostitution (bluntly put, the serial rape of women and children for profit) touched her deeply. Not long afterward, that touch triggered an epiphany. The concept forA Walk Across the Sun was hers before it was mine.
In the beginning, I struggled with the idea. I had a mountain of student debt and a law practice to grow. I knew that to write a novel on global human trafficking I would need the help of people in places of influence and danger; I would need time to research and write; and I would need resources to travel. In the end, however, I could neither ignore the idea's attractiveness nor deny its moral imperative. I was not in a position to rescue girls from brothels, but I could tell a story that would bring trafficking alive for readers just as a film brought it alive for me. I could lend my voice to the rising chorus of abolitionists saying: "Not in my generation."
When I said "yes" I dived deep, immersing myself in the literature on trafficking, learning the stories of slaves, traffickers, and customers, studying the international legal landscape, interviewing activists and officials in the U.S. and Europe, and traveling to India to see the reality of trafficking on the ground. In Mumbai, I met investigators working the streets of the red light areas to collect tips about captive children. I met attorneys laboring within the justice system to prosecute pimps and brothel owners. I met social workers with the most difficult job of all--putting rescued girls on a path toward healing and reintegration.
I knew, however, that I could not take my readers inside the sex trade unless I had gone there myself. Thus, one humid night a few days before I returned to the West, I met a man outside Mumbai Central Station, only a few blocks from Kamathipura, the city's largest red light area. The man was a friend of a friend and had offered to take me on an undercover "brothel tour." We took a taxi to M.R. Road where we met a malik--a brothel owner--known to my guide. After some negotiation, the man led us up two flights of steps to a room outfitted with couches and a mirror. The malik locked the door, closed the blinds and brought out about eight girls. All of them were young, and all of them were scared. I did not need a psychologist to tell me that they were not free to leave.
It has been almost three years since that night, but I can still picture the faces of those girls, still remember the revulsion I felt shaking the brothel owner's hand after I declined to make a purchase. I am haunted by the truth of slavery because I have seen it with my own eyes. I wrote A Walk Across the Sun to bring that truth alive for people like me, people who might prefer to believe that slavery is dead, or at least confined to dark alleys in the developing world. Human trafficking spans the globe, and so does my story--sweeping the reader from Mumbai to Paris to New York and Atlanta and revealing the many dimensions of the trade. The story is honest; it is hard-hitting, and based on the best research available. But--and this is critical--it is neither overwhelming nor grim. A Walk Across the Sun is a story of hope.
Hope, you say? How can you be hopeful after all you have seen? The answer is written in the pages of our history. However powerful and pervasive it may be, slavery is no more inevitable now than it was in the 1850s. But we cannot expect to counter a $32-billion-a-year industry without a massive society-wide effort. To vanquish this incarnation of the monster, we must pool our talents and resources, petition our elected officials to turn the millions in our war chest into billions, and commit ourselves to the cause of freedom for as long as it takes to win. It may take a generation, but it can be done. The only question is whether we have the courage to say "yes."
Cambodia is a land of dreams deferred. The enthusiasm of liberation from France in the 1950s fueled a vibrant cultural renaissance, exemplified in the ‘60s by the heady optimism of the Khmer rock era, a new musical movement. In the ‘70s, Khmer rock was suppressed by the Khmer Rouge, who killed one-fifth of the country’s population and brought the nation to ruin and collapse. It has been 30 years since the fall of Pol Pot’s regime, but the dreams of a prosperous, modern country have still not been fulfilled.
In The Girls of Phnom Penh, director Matthew Watson introduces us to three sets of aspirations deferred. We met three teenage girls — Srey Leak, Me Nea, and Cheata — who have dreams of becoming beauticians and falling in love. But these three girls, chatting by day about music and boys like their 16- and 17-year-old counterparts anywhere in the world, work at night as prostitutes in a karaoke club in Phnom Penh. They work to support their families, who, according to Watson, often depend completely on the money they are earning. For that reason, the girls defer their dreams again and again, night after night.
The poverty of the country falls particularly heavily on the shoulders of young girls. “The daughters aren’t seen in the same way as the sons, very sadly, and it’s almost like it’s the daughter’s responsibility to earn a living for the family, more so than the boys,” said Watson, speaking from London. This is an aspect of Cambodian culture called “chbab srey”, or “the role of women.”
The concept becomes a particular danger to young Cambodian girls on account of another common cultural belief in Cambodia and many other Asian countries. “These men genuinely believe that having sex with a virgin girl gives them special powers, and extra health, and extra luck if they gamble, and might make them live longer,” explained Watson.
Consequently, men save up for months to be able to buy a girl’s virginity, which can fetch as much as $1,200 from an interested buyer. “These girls practically have a bounty on their heads,” said Watson. “If their virginity is worth, say, $700, then, tragically, the temptation is there for the parents to sell the daughters, and often it’s a one-off; they’re not selling their daughters into prostitution.” What is intended as a one-time transaction, however, often serves as a gateway to a life in Cambodia’s massive sex industry.
While Watson’s first film, Cambodia: The Virginity Trade (2009), was an informative documentary on the Cambodian sex trade, The Girls of Phnom Penh is a beautiful and intimate portrait of the girls trapped by the system. “I really wanted to just show people how these girls live, and how they’re basically ordinary girls,” he said. “They’re quite normal girls, but in quite awful situations.”
Sadly, the awful situation in which the girls are ensnared is all too normal in Cambodia. Culturally, women who are not engaged in the sex trade in one form or another are not expected to be out at night; a woman encountered during a night on the town, whether she is ostensibly a waitress, a karaoke singer, or anything else, is almost unavoidably also engaged in prostitution of some kind.
“When men go out at night, they’re basically surrounded by these girls who are all working in the sex industry, and it just, sort of, feeds on itself. It’s perfectly normal for a man to go out with his friends any night of the week, have a few drinks, and then sleep with a prostitute.”
Watson becomes agitated thinking about his filming experience. “My crew slept with prostitutes all the time, that just shows how — and this really, really upset me — but it’s just so normal for men, for all men out there, to sleep with sex workers,” he said. “It shouldn’t be as normal as it is.”
After filming, Watson and his colleagues were able to raise the money to help Srey Leak, Cheata, and Me Nea out of their debts, and send them to a school where they are now studying to become beauticians. A special charitable fund, called the Cambodia Fund, has been set up to help girls in the same circumstances, and is now officially registered as a British charity.
John Brown's Raid. The raid by John Brown to free the slaves served as a catalyst for the Civil War. Five of Brown's raiders were African-American men who supported his ideals. They were Lewis Leery, John Copeland, Shields Green, Dangerfield Newby, and Osborne Anderson. Ironically the first man killed in the raid, Heyward Shepherd, and the first raider killed, Dangerfield Newby, were both free African-American men.
Leery and Copeland joined Brown from Oberlin, Ohio, a very abolitionist community, where Brown had spoken. Leery was married to Copeland's sister. Leery died in the fighting at Harpers Ferry. Copeland was captured trying to escape. He was tried in Charles Town, found guilty of murder and inciting slaves to rebel, and was hanged in Charles Town on December 16, 1859.
Shields Green joined John Brown after a meeting between Brown and Frederick Douglass in August of 1859 in Chambersburg. When Brown asked Douglass to come along to Harpers Ferry, he declined. But Green went with Brown. Green was captured with Brown in the engine house, tried in Charles Town, and was found guilty of murder and inciting slaves to rebel, both hangable offenses. He was hanged in Charles Town on December 16, 1859. Both Copeland and Green were found innocent of treason in their trials. In 1859, one had to be a citizen to be tried for treason. A "colored" man was not considered to be a citizen, and treason charges for both men were thus dropped. After their deaths, students from the Winchester Medical School in Virginia took their bodies for dissection; their bodies were never recovered.
Dangerfield Newby was the first of the raiders to die. Osborne Anderson said Newby had more to lose than anyone by fighting alongside John Brown, being a free black man with seven children and a wife in slavery. He was killed in fighting at the bridge in Harpers Ferry. On his body was found a letter from his wife, imploring him to come home and purchase his family before they were split up and sent to other areas.
Osborne Anderson, from West Chester, Pennsylvania, was the only one of the black raiders to escape. He fled Harpers Ferry with Albert Hazeltt when the fighting intensified on Monday, October 17. Hazlett was captured near Carlisle, Pennsylvania and was returned to Charles Town for trial. He too was found guilty and was hanged on March 16, 1860. Anderson was one of five of John Brown's raiders who were never captured. He fled to Canada and wrote a book called "A Black Voice of Harpers Ferry" which is the only book written by a black raider.
The raiders also killed a free black in the streets of Harpers Ferry. He was Heyward Shepherd, the baggage master of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. It is ironic that those men who came to free the slaves ended up causing the first town casualty, a free black man, and that the first raider casualty was also a free black man.
Storer College. Storer College was opened at Harpers Ferry in 1867 as an African- American teachers' college. It was founded by philanthropist John Storer and the Freewill Baptist Church. It became the first institution of higher learning in the state of West Virginia for African Americans and one of the first in the nation designated as such In 1906, the Niagara Movement held the first civil rights meetings on U.S. soil at Storer College in Harpers Ferry under the leadership of W.E.B. Du Bois. These meetings laid the foundation for the formation of the NAACP in 1909.
Martin R. Delaney. Charles Town native Martin R. Delaney was the only black officer who achieved the rank of major during the Civil War. This distinction recognized Delaney's stature as a black leader, although it proved to be mostly symbolic.
In the years prior to the war, Delaney had been active in the movement to relocate free blacks to Liberia, where they might have greater freedoms. In 1863 following President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the call for the enlistment of black militia regiments, Delaney began actively recruiting in New England. The chance to organize his own unit came in February 1865, when Lincoln commissioned him a major in the army. Delaney hurried to Charleston, South Carolina, and began recruiting two regiments of former slaves. The war ended two months later, however, before Delaney or any of his men had a chance to participate. photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootbearwdc
The Hilltop House Hotel. The African American Lovett family built and operated the Historic Hilltop House Hotel in Harpers Ferry in 1888. The Lovett family had been in the hotel business in Harpers Ferry since the early 1880's, and had owned and operated such facilities as the Lockwood House, near Storer College. Thomas Lovett built the Hilltop House after standing on the spot that offered unequaled beauty, and thinking, " Where the martyrdom of John Brown took place, I will build my hotel". The hotel was built overlooking the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. It was ravaged by fire twice, in 1912 and 1918, and each time the family rebuilt.
Thomas Lovett and his wife Lovonia owned and managed the Hilltop House for 38 years, during a time of great importance to the burgeoning African American movement after the Civil War. The Hilltop House attracted visitors from far beyond Harpers Ferry, and was recommended by the AAA and the B&O Railroad as an favored destination. Many famous people such as Mark Twain, Carl Sandburg, Alexander Graham Bell, Pearl Buck and others were guests of the hotel. In its heyday, it was a major contributor to the economy of Harpers Ferry. Today, the hotel has been found to be structurally unsound due to years of additions and renovations, and is closed to the public. SWAN Investments plans to rebuild the hotel based on its 1912 specifications.
Johnsontown. Johnsontown was founded by free blacks in an area outside of Charles Town. A slave family named Johnson was purchased by German Quakers in Virginia in 1720. This Quaker family gave the Johnson family their freedom, and brought them to the Jefferson County, WV area to work for them. In 1848, George Johnson purchased 14 acres of land and established Johnsontown. This is believed to be the first all-black town in West Virginia. Most of the buildings are gone, but a church and cemetery remain. It is commemorated by a highway marker placed by the Jefferson County Black History Preservation Society.
One of the most enigmatic and talented Soul men of all time, Bobby Womack has been a sort of Soul Forrest Gump, serving as a link from 50s Gospel to 60s Soul to 70s Rock and to some of the greatest musicians in each genre.
Here's the full episode of TV One's "Unsung" featuring Bobby Womack. Also, check out our full biography of Bobby (see link below).
Bobby Womack is the type of person that when you sit down to interview him, you get both a lesson on the history of the music business and a unique insider’s view from someone who has been to the top and back. Questions weren’t prompted during the interview. Memories became stories, stories became lessons, and lessons became new stories. Womack promised one thing only during the interview and that was his perception of the Truth. His memories of relationships with the likes of Sam Cooke, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Wilson Pickett, the Gorillaz, and more entangled a web of experiences that gave amazing insight into a man who made it from the ghetto to a shining star through sheer talent, artistry, and willpower. Watch below as he takes us through just a few of these experiences including the story behind “Across 110 Street.”
Later in our time with Womack, his long-time producer Harold Payne showed up for rehearsal and was kind enough to allow us a sneak-peak of their song “Left Handed, Upside Down” which is a project based on the life story of Womack.
From the duo behind 2008's Soul Science and 2009's Tell No Lies comes a new recording. Seven tracks wrapped up in an austere and over-designed CD package from Peter Gabriel's Real World Label. Once free of the neo-futurist packaging the weaving of shared and separate paths from Justin Adams and Julden Camara takes centre stage. Together and free and summoning the spirits...
The 42 Miles Press Poetry Award is being created in an effort to bring fresh and original voices to the poetry reading public. The prize will be offered annually to any poet writing in English, including poets who have never published a full length book as well as poets who have published several. New and Selected collections of poems are also welcome. The winning poet will receive $1,000 and publication of his or her book. The winner will also be invited to give a reading at Indiana University South Bend as part of the release of the book. The final selection will be made by the Series Editor. Current or former students or employees of Indiana University South Bend, as well as friends of the Series Editor, are not eligible for the prize. There is a $25, non-refundable, entry fee, made payable to I.U. South Bend. There is no limit on the number of entries an author may submit. Simultaneous submissions are fine, in fact they are encouraged, just please withdraw your manuscript if it gets taken for publication elsewhere. Please include a SASE with each entry. Please include a self-addressed postage paid postcard if you desire confirmation of manuscript receipt. No manuscripts will be returned. Entries sent by e-mail or fax are not permitted; they will be disqualified. On your cover sheet include name, address, phone number, and e-mail. The manuscript should be paginated and include a table of contents and acknowledgments page. Manuscripts will be accepted starting December 1, 2011, and the ending deadline will be March 1, 2012.
Manuscripts received prior to December 1, or postmarked after March 1, will be recycled and the entry fee returned. The winner will receive 50 copies of his or her book. With questions e-mail Davdlee@iusb.edu.
Mail manuscripts to:
42 Miles Press Poetry Award Indiana University South Bend Department of English 1700 Mishawaka Avenue P. O. Box 7111 South Bend, IN 46634-7111
Manuscripts submitted for the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award should exhibit an awareness of the contemporary “voice” in American poetry, an awareness of our moment in time as poets. We are excited to receive poetry that is experimental as well as work of a more formalist bent, as long as it reflects a complexity and sophistication of thought and language. Urgency, yes; melodrama, not so much. Winners will be announced via this website, as well as through the mail. We will also announce the winner in major magazines (Poets & Writers) and blogs, including this one. The winning book, and any others chosen from the pool of entries, will be published in 2012.
We are seeking two further essays to contribute to this collection which aims to examine, explore and critically engage with issues relating to African American urban life and cultural representation in the post civil rights era. The project will do so using Ice-T – and his myriad roles as musician, actor, writer, celebrity, industrialist - as a vehicle through which to interpret and understand various angles of the black experience in contemporary America. Questions to be considered include: how have African Americans contributed to recent popular culture terrain (both as artists and producers)? To what extent have the politics of race representation, gender and class evolved? In what ways have notions of geographical space and place progressed?
Ice-T stresses his pop-cultural ubiquity, and seemingly effortless ability to negotiate a number of cultural terrains. Though he was not the first rapper to star in a reality TV show, Ice-T has most recently made his mark in the documentary and reality genre, as writer, director, producer and star. As he details: “I didn’t want to become somebody who could only do one thing. ‘Oh, this dude used to be in a gang and now he makes rap records. You know, that’s all they can do is rap’ ”. Ice-T’s jack-of-all-trades approach has seen him journey into conventionally “white” cultural areas (including rock music and a network Cop show). Moreover, his adoption of various roles within a startling multitude of pop-cultural arenas provides an opportunity to discuss the intersection of written, musical and filmic forms. This is the first book that, taken as a whole, looks at a black pop-cultural icon's manipulation of (or manipulation by?) so many different cultural forms simultaneously. The result is a fascinating series of tensions and paradoxes, in particular surrounding notions of racial authenticity or ‘real-ness’, which this book is uniquely placed to address.
Despite branching out into numerous genres (with impressive degrees of success in all), most of the scholarly attention to Ice-T has focused on his rapping career in the late 1980s and early 1990s as well as the Cop Killer debate, and his move into films with New Jack City, a celebrated text in the ghetto film genre of a similar time frame. Though today he is regularly booked on the college lecture circuit, his place in the academy is mostly restricted to the political and social critique played out in his rap lyrics and character of cop in NJC. There have been no scholastic monographs or collections of essays dedicated to Ice-T alone and his moves into literary realm have been relatively untouched, in part because of the recent release dates of his memoir and novel (both 2011). No other book has sought to frame Ice-T within the debates that his multiple careers present. This edited collection seeks to re-address the relatively under-researched aspects of his career as a means to understand the context of recent US history and culture for African Americans. He can be used as a site for channelling topical discussions about youth, crime, race, and violence, as well as opening up a series of discourses about issues varying from black masculinity and representational politics, through to celebrity and cultural commerce.
Please contact William Turner and Josephine Metcalf for further information on the collection; we are particularly keen to hear from scholars who would be interested in addressing gender politics in Ice-T’s reality show “Ice Loves Coco”.
This panel examines bawdy-house life and customs during an era of increased anxiety over race, sex, class, immigration, expansion, urbanization, and industrialization.
Topics and/or critical paradigms can include, but are certainly not limited to: miscegenation, class, disease, immigration, urbanization, industrialization, expansion, politics, temperance, manners, conduct, prostitution, gambling, race, gender, abolitionism, feminism, religion, sporting life, critical race/queer theory and reader-response.
Send 1-page abstract and brief bio as Word attachment to Rebecca L. Williams, rebelwill7@gmail.com, with ‘MLA 2013’ in subject line.
