culture

Now that the weather is consistently warm throughout the country, we’ve entered into what the British would probably call high season for weddings. According to American Wedding Consultants, the nation’s oldest association of professional wedding planners, the months of May through October are big favorites for saying “I do.” So, if you’re getting lots of…

And so continues the conundrum of being a post-racial black candidate in a still-very-racial world. To speak the truth about anything involving race is to be accused instantly of dragging out that famous racial deck we’ve all been dealt that stands us in such good stead in America. The campaign of Barack Obama has had…

In 2007, Oprah Winfrey gave $50 million to establish the Oprah Winfrey Foundation and Oprah’s Angel Network; in 1987 Bill Cosby gave $20 million to Spelman College; in 2004 Buddy Fletcher pledged to give away $50 million to organizations to further the goal of Brown v. Board of Education. African Americans have a tradition of…

Dad was a revolutionary. A prolific artist and intellectual, a driving force in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, founder of the artists’ collective AfriCobra (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) and retired dean of the Howard University College of Fine Arts, Jeff R. Donaldson created works that are world-renowned, brilliant and timeless. But…

On my desk, in my office, is a picture of my mother and me. I might be 2 weeks old. She’s cradling me with one arm against her chest, her slender fingers smoothing down my baby hair. She’s got a close-cropped afro, and we’re in somebody’s kitchen—maybe ours, but probably my Grandmommy’s. There’s a bag…

The lunch was supposed to be about politics. I had just moved to town and sitting across from me was a 50-something former Cincinnati city councilman and preacher who was helping to run down the lay of the land. Earlier, when he showed me his church’s new recreation room, I lamented that I wished I…

Everyone has little mind games to occupy themselves when waiting unexpectedly; mine usually involve sports lineups in some way. The habit isn’t a holdover from my sports geek youth; it developed a few years ago when a Yankee fan at my corner bar kept announcing with great pride that proof of the Yankees greatness lies…

-BOOK EXCERPT Pig Candy: Taking my Father South, Taking My Father Home By Lise Funderburg Copyright © 2008. Reprinted by permission of Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. ********** In March of 2004, just when the urge to rake out garden beds and plant summer bulbs is too strong to resist, despite…

Four years ago, I made a promise to my newborn daughter in her hospital room. I stayed awake the entire night waiting for her to open her eyes. I’ll never forget the feeling, as if I were on top of a skyscraper, feeling the rush of greatness and being consumed by fear—fear of not knowing…

Copyright © from the forthcoming book THE JIVE TALKER by Samson Kambalu, to be published by Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., N.Y. Printed by permission. —My father wore three-piece suits that he had ordered from London in the ’60s and ’70s, when he could still afford them. Back then he looked…