Posts in On our minds
A Literary Wake for Ntozake Shange

Join us in remembering Ntozake Shange sista poet, friend, mentor, teacher, Black feminist Obie Award winning playwright, activist and daughter of the African Diaspora who wrote and actively fought for Black women and all women of color, for Black liberation and the freedom, humanity and unity of all the children of the AfroDiaspora. Bring something for the community altar, and your love for Zake, who is soaring now in all the rainbows she conjured. We celebrate her life, her work and what she stood for! 

Wed, Nov 7 at the National Black Theater. 7pm. Free to the public.

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The Art of the Accused: A Conversation

In the wake of #MeToo, how should we consider the art of those accused of reprehensible acts? Should their actions affect how we see their work? Should it color our reasons for engaging with it? As part of PEN America’s Conversations of Consequence event series, Deborah Solomon, A. O. Scott, Tanya Selvaratnam, and Maggie Mustard discussed the issues surrounding power, spectatorship, violence, gender, labor, and media consumption.

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A Map of Every Building in America (NY Times)

Traces of Distant Culture

South of New Orleans This arrangement of buildings along a narrow spit of land on either side of a Louisiana bayou shows the imprint of the region’s history under France: “long lot” development, which stretched skinny holdings laterally away from important waterways. Geography shapes settlement, but culture does, as well.

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Introducing Soon-Yi Previn As controversies tumbled around her, the daughter of Mia Farrow and wife of Woody Allen stayed silent for decades. No more. (Vulture)

nce, she was seen as a victim, her youth and relative innocence taken advantage of by a powerful, much older man who sucked her into his vortex. Or, alternately, she was a Lolita, a seductress who wittingly betrayed the Mother Teresa–like figure who’d saved her from life in an orphanage. These days, Soon-Yi Previn is seen as an accomplice of sorts, who, in the wake of renewed accusations by Dylan Farrow that Dylan’s adoptive father, Woody Allen, sexually molested her, has stood by Allen even as his reputation has plummeted and his once-revered films have been reassessed in the light of the #MeToo movement. Throughout this time, Soon-Yi herself, the slim Korean-born woman with a curtain of dark hair who showed up occasionally at Allen’s side in grainy news images, has said virtually nothing, her sphinxlike presence adding to the mystery of what actually took place. He did what? She’s how old? And whose daughter?

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Naomi Osaka Lost Her Moment of Triumph. Let’s Not Forget Her Match. (New York Times)

So was the chair umpire Carlos Ramos truly a thief in Saturday’s United States Open women’s final? Not by the letter of tennis law.

But Ramos, Serena Williams’s coach Patrick Mouratoglou and, above all, Williams herself bear responsibility for the way an intense, gripping final between a great champion and a great young talent turned ugly.

The only full-blown victim on Saturday was the winner: Naomi Osaka.

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