black writers
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MacArthur Foundation Names New 'Geniuses'; 12 of This Year's 21 Fellows Are Black
Why are geniuses always evil? …And white? Comic book superheroes are always strong, righteous champions for truth and justice who battle immoral but creative supervillains who are usually so smart that we often refer to them as “evil geniuses.” Lex Luther was a scientist and a business magnate whose alopecia led him to a life…
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Black Authors Stand Out on the National Book Awards’ Shortlist of Finalists
Black talent got a prestigious shout-out when the 2020 finalists for the National Book Awards were announced on Tuesday. The 25 honorees and their titles, considered the best literature in America by the National Book Foundation, join previous winners like Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jesmyn Ward in a diverse pool of talent and topics…
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Did You Know Reading Black Books Is Also a Form of Resistance?
Pages worth of protest may be sitting right on your bookshelves. This October kicked off during Banned Books Week, traditionally observed annually in the last week of September; but the history behind the censorship of books is worth revisiting any day of the year. In 1982, just a year into the escalating conservatism of the…
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'We Can't Be Afraid to Challenge Our Own People': The Root Presents: It's Lit! Gets Crunk With Brittney Cooper
“There is no Black Freedom Project if you don’t care about Black women.” If there’s one belief upon which “crunk feminist,” author, scholar and educator Brittney Cooper has based her life’s work, it’s this core tenet of Black feminism, as previously maintained by brilliant minds from the Combahee River Collective to 19th-century pioneers like Maria…
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'Black People Are America's True Founding Fathers': The Root Presents: It's Lit! Launches With 1619 Project Creator Nikole Hannah-Jones
“I just want people to know the date 1619,” is what New York Times investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones told her editor when pitching the journalistic opus we now know as The 1619 Project. Launched in August 2019, the landmark issue compiled some of the greatest writers and thought leaders of our time to commemorate the…
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Read, Write, Revolt: The Root Launches the It's Lit! Podcast With Inaugural Guest Nikole Hannah-Jones
Autumn has only just begun, but 2020 has already been a study in contrasts: Some of us have taken to the streets, but even more of us spent an unprecedented amount of our time at home this year. Our discourse has unimaginably become even more divided, but we are holding our loved ones and ideals…
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Turning a New Page, the Schomburg Literary Festival Is Going Virtual—and Global—for 2020
OK, so let’s articulate the obvious: There will be no tents or stages at the Schomburg Literary Festival this year. There will be no road-tripping or traveling to New York City’s beloved Harlem or electric anticipation in the line for in-person author signings. There will be no flipping through the fresh, crisp pages of a…
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Christian Cooper Releases It's a Bird Comic Book Inspired by Viral 'Central Park Karen' Incident
Y’all remember Christian Cooper, the Central Park bird watcher who gave us the Watergate of viral Karen stories? (Karengate? Beckygate? Hey-Blacky-get-the-hell-away-from-my-gate? I’m sure we’ll settle on a name eventually.) Well, he’s back with a new comic book partially inspired by his encounter with Amy “Central Park Karen” Cooper, the woman who lost her job, dog…
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The Discreet Charms of Malady
First, oh, the stories you will tell. I awake from a four-hour surgery with an epidural and pain pump full of Fentanyl to sounds of a man dying on the gurney next to me, separated only by a threadbare curtain. Codes blare over the PA system, calling for every available physician to assist while next…
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Frankly My Dear, We Don't Give a Damn About These Woke Gestures If We Don't See Systemic Change in Hollywood
Hollywood is riding the woke train—without making any necessary stops along the journey to do the real work. Earlier in the month, we mentioned the emptiness of symbolic gestures in the form of Black boxes. Well, it seems like those black boxes are still continuing to cover up the bigger picture in yet other ways.…