American Masters—August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand, airing on PBS Feb. 20, gives an inside look at a private man referred to by many as an outsider. Wilson, the brilliant Pittsburgh-born playwright who wrote 10 plays—nine of which took place in his hometown—covering 10 decades, explored the cultural ideas and attitudes of what…

Black or White is a film that tackles the subject of biracial identity through the lens of a hard-drinking, tortured white lawyer and a spirited, self-made black entrepreneur, played by Academy Award winners Kevin Costner and Octavia Spencer. Despite Costner’s strong performance and a film intended to explore a complicated matter, director Mike Binder holds…

Karen Pittman is an actress whose star is on the rise. She is currently burning up the Broadway stage in Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced. The play examines the precariousness of power, identity, prestige and race relations in contemporary New York City. The brave narrative tackles subjects like Islamophobia, cultural appropriation, and interracial personal…

It’s official. British actor David Oyelowo (pronounced oh-yellow-oh) is a bona fide star. He’s an actor whom viewers have been seeing over the last 15 years, but they may not have been able to put a name to his face, as we say in the United States. That’s about to change with Oyelowo’s portrayal of…

Imagine going through your entire childhood having to hide your HIV-positive status because your mother wanted to protect you from being shunned, humiliated, bullied or abused like the late Ryan White, the Indiana teenager who contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion in 1984. Now imagine keeping that secret even as a college student while engaging…

Oprah Winfrey’s The Life You Want Weekend 2014 tour is wrapping up this weekend in San Jose, Calif. The eight-city self-improvement tour features Winfrey and a host of special guests inspiring and empowering thousands of attendees through personal tales of triumph over tragedy, on-site activities (journaling and exercise breaks) and keepsakes (fluorescent armbands) that symbolize…

Beyond the Lights, opening in theaters Friday, is the third feature film from writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood, whose other works include The Secret Life of Bees (2008), the TV movie Disappearing Acts (2000) and the classic love story Love and Basketball (2000). If the success of Love and Basketball helped propel Prince-Bythewood into the Hollywood stratosphere, along…

Celebrated South African Paralympian Oscar Pistorius has been convicted of culpable homicide. He was found not guilty of premeditated murder on Thursday but later found guilty of the lesser charge for firing four shots into a locked bathroom door, killing his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, last year on Valentine’s Day. Now Pistorius faces five to…

The life story of legendary soul singer James Brown is a complicated one. Brown is as well-known for being a musical genius as he is for being a tyrannical, abusive bandleader and spouse. The man who grew up in abject poverty in South Carolina and Georgia danced, sang and shouted his way into a world…

Over the last two days, Boko Haram, the group claiming responsibility for the abduction of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls several weeks ago, has been blamed for several attacks on villages near Chibok, where they were kidnapped. On Tuesday, the BBC reports, 118 people were killed in a bombing in the town of Jos, and…