7 WAYS COLSON WHITEHEAD’S UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IS PURE DOPENESS

I expect Colson Whitehead’s National Book Award-nominated novel, The Underground Railroad, to win plenty of kudos for its ability to convey a layered story of metaphoric Afro-mysticism surrounding Black slaves, particularly a young woman named Cora, who are pursuing freedom from the antebellum South. Abolitionists, pro-slavery supporters and the ideological permutations in-between help to frame […]

SUNDAY SMACK: DID US GOVERNMENT COMMIT CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY?

I just completed my second reading of John A. Williams’ novel Clifford’s Blues — a well-written but far from feel-good story of a black, gay jazz musician imprisoned in Nazi Germany. The book frequently mentions the gruesome medical experiments performed on prisoners by Nazi physicians — which made me think of the 1932–1972 Tuskegee, Alabama syphilis […]