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British Get a Dose of Race in America
(The Root) — The other night I went to see Race, by Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright David Mamet at London’s Hampstead Theatre. The play is a profoundly intelligent, visceral and highly incendiary legal drama that deftly skewers, mercilessly punctures and audaciously lacerates its audience with a crushingly pessimistic assessment of the place of race in…
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Baldwin's Harlem Comes to London
(The Root) — Harlem has come to London, and what a marvelous spectacle it is to behold. To be precise, it is James Baldwin’s Harlem of 1953 — complete with haunting, sensual jazz music, uplifting Pentecostal songs and the majestic cadences of evangelical oratory — that has the South Bank completely enthralled. Baldwin’s The Amen…
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On Racism and Jealousy
(The Root) — Few theatrical productions are the talk of the town as much as the National Theatre’s Othello currently is. Make no mistake: Shakespearean tragedy comes no better than this. Nicholas Hytner’s swan song production after a decade as artistic director at the National is nothing short of masterful. This is Hytner’s Sistine Chapel,…
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A New Showcase for Art From the Diaspora
(The Root) — Cork Street in Mayfair, nestling just behind Savile Row and the sartorial panache of its world-famous bespoke tailors, is without a doubt one of London’s most salubrious streets, internationally renowned for its plethora of opulent, high-end art galleries. Thankfully it now has a most welcome recent addition — one that goes a…
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Caribbean Literary Giant Gets His Due
(The Root) — This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Martinican polymath Aimé Césaire. If anyone truly deserves the title of Caribbean Renaissance man, it’s Césaire. Poet, playwright, co-founder of the influential literary movement négritude, politician and mayor of Fort de France, Martinique, for nearly 56 years, Césaire was a prodigious talent…
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Honoring the French Film 'Rue Cases-Negres'
(The Root) — Ye krik! Ye krak! Each time I hear those four words, I get goose bumps. To this day, that strikingly evocative French Creole refrain haunts me. Popularized by its use in a sadly much-neglected and long-forgotten foreign film with subtitles, the call-and-response exchange between a little black boy and an old black…
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Say It Loud, I'm Coloured and I'm Proud
Editor’s note: The spelling of the ethnic term “Coloured,” used within the context of South African history and culture, reflects the writer’s preference. (The Root) — I know what you’re probably thinking, and to be honest, I don’t blame you. You probably took one look at the title of this piece and thought to yourself,…
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Film Explores One Man’s Vision of Race, Culture and Identity
Lauded British-African filmmaker John Akomfrah’s aesthetically captivating and poignant homage to Jamaican polymath, cultural theorist and British intellectual Stuart Hall is a real must-see, and one that I am all the richer for having seen. Currently showing as a multilayered video installation at Tate Britain for the next six months, this three-screen film montage is…
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The Island Is a Triumph of Spirit Over Hardship
The Island will forever be synonymous with John Kani and Winston Ntshona, the two black South African actors who devised the play in collaboration with white South African dramatist Athol Fugard in 1973, and who played the two lead roles (to which they lent their names) for almost three decades in productions throughout the world.…
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No, ‘Niggardly’ Isn’t the N-Word
“Niggardly.” Go on, I dare you. Say it. Savor those syllables. Let your tongue caress those consonants. If you’re black and reading this, you may well have just laughed, smiled knowingly, been confused or even taken offense, depending on the size of your vocabulary. If you’re white and reading this, you will probably have just…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
