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THEATER REVIEW: "Bootycandy" Looks at Black Attitudes Toward Gays

By goodblacknews on September 11, 2014
“Bootycandy”: Robert O’Hara’s play stars, from left, Lance Coadie Williams, Phillip James Brannon and Benja Kay Thomas at Playwrights Horizons. (SARA KRULWICH / THE NEW YORK TIMES)

In one of the sharpest scenes in “Bootycandy,” Robert O’Hara’s searing and sensationally funny comedy about the sometimes poisonous attitude toward homosexuality in black culture, an adolescent boy hesitantly tells his mother and stepfather that a man tried to follow him home from the library.

The reaction isn’t the concern and outrage we expect, to say the least.
“What was you doing?” his mother suspiciously demands.
Reading a book, comes the meek answer.
“You was just sitting up in a library reading a book, and some man got up and decided to try to follow you home?” she says scornfully.
His stepfather, vaguely hearing this conversation, barely looks up from his paper to mutter his own comment: “You need to take up some sports.”
The scene grows only more bracing and hilarious as the interrogation continues. When the boy, Sutter (Phillip James Brannon), who’s decked out in full Michael Jackson regalia, complete with one sequined glove, reminds his mother that this same man has approached him before, she and his stepfather continue to view his experience as proof of his own wayward behavior.
Why the hell is he reading the likes of Jackie Collins anyway? Why does he play so many Whitney Houston albums? The ultimate solution to this problem of men following him around, proposed by this dismissive mother: “This school year: no musicals.”
“Bootycandy,” which Mr. O’Hara has directed as well, kicks off the season at Playwrights Horizons in New York, where it opened on Wednesday night, with a big, bold bang, underscoring this theater’s reputation as one of the city’s more adventurous incubators of daring playwriting. As raw in its language and raucous in spirit as it is smart and provocative, the play depicts the life of a black gay man in a series of scenes that range widely in style. Many fly wildly into the realm of the absurd, while others are naturalistic pictures of Sutter’s life as he comes to terms with his sexuality and the damage his culture’s attitude toward it may have inflicted on his psyche.
Mr. Brannon plays the central character throughout. Convincing as boy, teenager and man, he modulates his performance with wonderful grace as the tone shifts from scene to scene. Four other terrific actors — Jessica Frances Dukes, Benja Kay Thomas, Lance Coadie Williams and Jesse Pennington — each play several roles, many outrageously comic.
Passages from Sutter’s life alternate with scenes that play upon similar themes. In one, a minister, embodied by Mr. Williams in roof-raising hyper-evangelical mode, admonishes his flock for paying heed to salacious rumors about “sexually perverted” members of the church choir, only to rip off his clerical robes and reveal something rather startling underneath.

OPINION: Black Millennials Are Emerging as the ‘Movement Generation'

By goodblacknews on August 29, 2014

Michael Brown protest
Christina Bijou holds a sign during a rally outside the Department of Justice, August 27, 2014, in Washington, to call on the Attorney General Eric Holder to help secure justice for Michael Brown and the people of Ferguson. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

On August 22, almost two weeks after Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, The Washington Post published an op-ed by Columbia University professor Fredrick Harris titled “Will Ferguson be a moment or a movement?”
I started working on my piece about the new era of black activism (which you can read here) months ago, and so I read Harris’s op-ed with the same level of irritation that made me want to write that piece in the first place. Not that there isn’t any value in what Harris wrote, because there certainly is. But if you’re asking the question “Where is the movement?” you simply haven’t been paying attention.
“A moment of trauma can oftentimes present you with an opportunity to do something about the situation to prevent that trauma from happening again,” Charlene Carruthers, national coordinator for Black Youth Project 100, told me in an interview for that piece, and the millennial generation has been presented with trauma after trauma. The killing of Sean Bell, the over-prosecution of the Jena Six, the killing of Oscar Grant, the killing of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, the killing of Trayvon Martin and so many more moments that may not have captured the national media attention but those events have defined the late adolescence and early adulthood of black folks of the millennial generation. As part of that demographic, let me say: the trauma has been fucking exhausting.
So, too, has been the haranguing from older generations that we have been too apathetic, that we have been too “post-racial,” that we have not done our part in upholding the legacy of the civil-rights movement. And so I wanted to write a corrective to that narrative, as I’ve seen my generation take up the fight and organize and begin along the hard road to movement building. It’s happening at this very moment. It was happening before Michael Brown was killed.
Harris writes: “What may keep Ferguson from becoming a national transformative event is if “justice” is narrowly confined to seeking relief for Brown and his family. If the focus is solely on the need for formal charges against Wilson, a fair trial, a conviction, a wrongful-death lawsuit—rather than seeing those things as part of a broader movement that tackles stand-your-ground laws, the militarization of local police, a requirement that cameras be worn by police on duty and the need for a comprehensive federal racial-profiling law. If justice remains solely personal, rather than universal.”
But that work had already begun before Ferguson erupted. The Dream Defenders traveled to the United Nations to present a case against “stand-your-ground” laws, and BYP100 recently organized an action at the Chicago Police Department headquarters to address discrepancies in marijuana arrests. The movement is here. The pictures are not as arresting as what comes from a moment like Ferguson, and therefore aren’t as compelling to media outlets only interested in the sensational. But the criminalization of black youth has emerged as the central focus of organizing efforts for the millennial generation and the work is being done.
On Twitter, filmmaker/writer/activist dream hampton called millennials the “Movement Generation.” It fits.
article by Mychal Denzel Smith via thenation.com

EDITORIAL: Ferguson, Michael Brown and the Renewed Mission of Good Black News

By goodblacknews on August 20, 2014

Screen Shot 2014-08-20 at 12.03.58 PM
Carissa McGraw and other protesters raised their hands and turned their backs to law enforcement officials after a vigil for Michael Brown (Whitney Curtis/New York Times)

As everyone knows, the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the unrest, protests and investigations that continue to unfold in the wake of this tragedy are mightily affecting (and hopefully redefining) the national conversation on racism, abuses of power and overbearing, militarized police action against citizens.
As the editor of a website dedicated solely to providing and promoting Good Black News, it has been admittedly hard in the past week to bring myself to post what were starting to seem like frivolous accomplishments and events in the wake of a soul-stirring grass roots movement against tyranny and injustice.  This unrest in particular feels like it has the makings of a sea change from the status quo into a new era of human rights, where systemic and commonplace brutality is voted down and rooted out of any and all policing bodies that are meant to Protect and Serve, not Terrify and Dehumanize.
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Michael Brown Sr., second from left, the Rev. Al Sharpton, center, and Lesley McSpadden, mother of Michael Brown, at a news conference at the Old Courthouse in St. Louis. (Whitney Curtis / New York Times)

But, even though the eventual outcome could lead to something positive, how can any of what is happening day-to-day (tear gassing, unprovoked arrests, pockets of protester violence, autopsy results) qualify as Good Black News?  But not posting anything about Ferguson did not feel right, either.  Thus, aside from a few tweets, GBN has been silent for days.
Upon serious thought and reflection, I’ve come to believe that publishing Good Black News is more important and necessary than ever.  The achievements of people of color are still woefully under-publicized and reported, and the only way to change minds or inspire pride in those who internalize the “less than” narrative, is to keep putting as much GBN out there as possible.
Thus, going forward, in addition to our regular mix of GBN, we will also post items, tweets, stories and pictures that cover the Ferguson story — the GBN philosophy will still be in place and nothing will be incendiary or negative — in fact, non-violent protest, speaking out, photos, tweets and the like that continue to highlight the injustices still prevalent in this country ARE, in my opinion, Good Black News.  Granted, nothing will bring back Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Oscar Grant or countless others who have suffered the same unjust fate, but positive, insistent protests and actions do have the power to prevent the next young man or woman of color from being victimized, and that we uncategorically and unreservedly support.
Onward and upward —
Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Founder and Editor-In-Chief

THEATER REVIEW: "Raisin in the Sun" Brings Denzel Washington Back to Broadway

By goodblacknews on April 4, 2014
From left, Sophie Okonedo, Mr. Washington, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Bryce Clyde Jenkins and Anika Noni Rose play members of a family pondering whether to move to a suburb. (Credit: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

The spark of rebellion, the kind that makes a man stand up and fight, has almost been extinguished in Walter Lee Younger. As portrayed by Denzel Washington in Kenny Leon’s disarmingly relaxed revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun — which opened on Thursday night at the Ethel Barrymore Theater — Walter appears worn down, worn out and about ready to crawl into bed for good. Frankly, he looks a whole lot older than you probably remember him.

That’s partly because, at 59, Mr. Washington, the much laureled movie star, is about a quarter of a century older than the character he is playing, at least as written. (This production bumps Walter’s age up to 40 from 35.) But it’s also because, as this production of Raisin makes clearer than any I’ve seen before, Walter inhabits a world that ages men like him fast.

Listen to how his mama, Lena (LaTanya Richardson Jackson), describes her late husband’s existence: “I seen him, night after night, come in, and look at that rug, and then look at me, the red showing in his eyes, the veins moving in his head. I seen him grow thin and old before he was 40, working and working like somebody’s horse.”

In this engrossingly acted version of Hansberry’s epochal 1959 portrait of an African-American family, Walter is all too clearly his father’s son. Lena may tell him, shaking her head, that he is “something new, boy.” But you know that her great fear is that he is not. Small wonder she shows such smothering protectiveness to Walter’s 11-year-old son, Travis (Bryce Clyde Jenkins).

A claustrophobic fatigue pervades the cramped, South Side Chicago apartment in which A Raisin in the Sun is set. And despite its often easygoing tone, a happy ending feels far from guaranteed. As designed by Mark Thompson, the Youngers’ living room cum kitchen is a narrow corridor that keeps its three generations of inhabitants in close, erosive proximity.

The production begins with a searing vision of bone-weariness. Ruth Younger (Sophie Okonedo), Walter’s wife, stands frozen center stage in a bathrobe, amid sallow morning light. Her face is harrowed, and her arms are braced against the kitchen counter in what is almost a crucifix position. She is trying to find the strength to get through another day.

Mr. Leon relaxes that initial tautness for the scene that follows, in which the Youngers — who also include Walter’s sister, Beneatha (a first-rate Anika Noni Rose), a pre-med student — go through their usual morning rituals. And the play as a whole has a genial, conversational quality; it always holds you, but without trying to shake you.

Still, that opening scene strikes a note that will resonate. Exhaustion is pulling at the Youngers like a dangerous force of gravity. As Hansberry puts it in her stage directions, “Weariness has, in fact, won in this room.”

BOOK REVIEW: Going Back to Lagos in Teju Cole's "Every Day Is for the Thief"

By goodblacknews on March 22, 2014
Author Teju Cole and the cover of his book, "Every Day is For the Thief." (©Teju Cole / Random House)
Author Teju Cole and the cover of his book, “Every Day is For the Thief.” (©Teju Cole / Random House)

Imagine a patient, observant and precise writer like the late W.G. Sebald reborn as a Nigerian exile, returning to and then wandering about that country’s teeming and chaotic cultural capital, Lagos. That, in broad strokes, is the voice of the narrator of Teju Cole‘s fine novel, Every Day Is for the Thief.

“The air in the strange environment of this city is dense with story, and it draws me into thinking of life as stories,” Cole’s unnamed narrator says halfway through the novel, as he becomes more deeply immersed in the disorder, the striving, the corruption and the inventiveness of Lagos and its people. “The narratives fly at me from all directions … And that literary texture of lives full of unpredictable narrative, is what appeals.”
Cole earned a large following in the United States for his PEN Faulkner Award-winning Open City, published in 2011. That novel told the story of a Nigerian immigrant and his wanderings in New York City and other places.  The U.S.-born Cole was raised and educated in Nigeria. Before he wrote Open City, he had written Every Day Is for the Thief, his first book, published in Nigeria in 2007, and which Random House is now issuing in the United States for the first time.

Key and Peele Land Cover of Time Magazine, Write Opinion Piece About Comedy

By goodblacknews on March 16, 2014

Key and Peele
Comedy Central duo Key and Peele are on a roll.  After landing on the cover of New York Times Sunday Magazine last year, this week they are cover boys for national weekly news magazine Time.  It’s the Ideas Issue, and Key and Peele offer an opinion piece about comedy that may or may not make you laugh, but at the very least will make you think.  Check it out below:
Would you make fun of a burn victim? Well, we did. Sort of… We’re comics. In the most recent season of our TV show, in a sketch titled “Insult Comic,” a traditional stand-up comedian professes that he is “going to get everybody” in his set (the guy toward the front with big ears, the fat guy, the woman with comically large breasts). That’s the phrase, isn’t it, when a critic wants to praise a comedian for the fearless nature of his or her comedy? That he or she “gets everybody”? That “nobody is safe”? One of the club patrons in our sketch, however, is a wheelchair-bound burn victim. “You skipped me,” he calls from the audience, with a robotic-sounding artificial larynx. “Go for it,” he says, “I can take it.”
But can we, as a society, take it anymore?
Today it seems that we live in a world of extremes. On one end of the spectrum, we have anonymous Internet trolls looking for opportunities to dole out cruelty with impunity. But in mainstream culture, it often seems we’re drowning in a sea of political correctness that lapped up on our shores a couple of decades ago and has yet to recede.
It’s amazing to think how popular television shows like All in the Family and Good Times might fare today in a Hollywood pitch meeting. Films like Blazing Saddles and Silver Streak wouldn’t make it past the development stage at a studio. Too edgy.

GBN MUSIC REVIEW: Quick Love for Pharrell Williams' "GIRL"

By goodblacknews on March 3, 2014

pharrellgirl

Review by Lesa Lakin
Review by Lesa Lakin

In our quest for great music, we didn’t hesitate to add Pharrell Williams‘ latest release GIRL to our must-have list.  He is, after all, the man who makes us “Happy.”
GIRL celebrates women in this insightful, sultry, melodically delicious album.  Giving the ladies much more than a superficial “I get you” wink, Pharrell lyrically dedicates this album to all the amazing women he’s ever come across, and had me swooning from track one.  Listen closely to “Marilyn Monroe” — he celebrates ALL females and all of our differences.  In our current climate of technology-based put downs (social media rants) and the ever-increasing desire for perfect beauty, Pharrell thoughtfully doles out the love no matter who you are or what you look like.  He wants a different girl… and it’s refreshing.

My personal favorites on the album are “Hunter”, “Come Get It Bae”, “Lost Queen” (I love when he sing/talks on this one), “It Girl” and a fun song with Justin Timberlake called “Brand New” — all great turn-it-up-and-blast songs.  There’s something about the smoothness of Pharrell’s voice paired with his incomparable, artistic use of beats, lyrics and vocals that make me want to run, bounce, dance, drive… MOVE!   Simply put, this album will make you… yes, I’m saying it again, but in all caps now – HAPPY.  Additionally, Alicia Keys lends her vocals to the inspirational track “Know Who You Are.”  Great beats for the boys with melodic compliments to empower the girls.  This man pleases all while provoking deeper feelings.

And seriously, when I heard there was even a controversy about Pharrell’s choice of cover models (hysteric claims of no brown girls)… I sighed. Who doesn’t know that Pharrell likes brown girls, all girls… and why do we even care what models he chose?  Slow your roll haters and get your facts straight — Williams is extremely inclusive.  P.S.  there is a black model featured.    
GIRL is non-stop fun and a timeless keeper which should capture audiences of various ages.  I’ve been arguing with my youngest sister for years over who the original Pharrell fan is in the family.  She actually tried to claim that she’s loved/known about “Skateboard P.”  the longest.  It’s pretty cute but I can’t ever let her have this.  I’ve been digging Pharrell since, well… I’m not going to date myself.  Just trust that Mr. Williams has been making me dance for quite some time and there are no signs of him stopping any time soon.

Oh, and about Pharrell using “GIRL” as the album’s title before everyone starts — yes, of course sometimes calling a woman a “girl” can be condescending and even worse, derogatory.  But that’s certainly not Pharrell’s intention here.  It’s a fun, inclusive and tender use of the word, and truth be told, I don’t think there is a woman out there who doesn’t want to be somebody’s girl.  I’m winking back… thanks, Pharrell.

GIRL by Pharrell Williams – GBN highly recommended

BOOK REVIEW: Helen Oyeyemi's "Boy, Snow, Bird" Turns a Fairy Tale Inside Out

By goodblacknews on March 1, 2014

Helen Oyeyemi
The cover of “Boy, Snow, Bird” and author Helen Oyeyemi. (Piotr Cieplak / Riverhead)

The risks that Helen Oyeyemi takes in her fifth novel, Boy, Snow, Bird, are astonishing in their boldness.  “Nobody ever warned me about mirrors,” begins the narrator, Boy, a pale white girl in Manhattan’s East Village whose rat-catcher father beats her until she runs away to a small town in Massachusetts and marries a man she doesn’t love. It is 1953. The man she doesn’t love, a widower, has a small child, also very pale and very beautiful, and very beloved by all, named Snow.

In time, Boy and her husband have their own child, Bird, who is black; this is how Boy discovers that her husband and much of his family have been passing for white. Urged by her husband’s family to give up her telltale baby, Boy instead makes a hard choice: She sends the beloved Snow away.  “Snow is not the fairest of them all,” Boy insists. “And the sooner [they all] understand that, the better.” Love, that magical power, makes Boy protective and destructive at once.

How a Gay Football Star Could Change Black America for the Better

By goodblacknews on February 10, 2014
184220418-michael-sam-of-the-missouri-tigers-recovers-a-fumble
Michael Sam of the Missouri Tigers recovers a fumble for a touchdown against the Georgia Bulldogs on Oct. 12, 2013, in Athens, Ga. (KEVIN C. COX/GETTY IMAGES)

On Sunday night, Michael Sam made history. The college football standout and likely top NFL draft pick publicly acknowledged that he is gay, which would make him the first athlete in a major American professional team sport to announce he is gay at the very beginning of his career. Sam’s announcement is already one of the biggest sports stories ever, but the timing of his announcement could make it one of the biggest cultural stories ever as well.

Some of you may be scratching your heads right now trying to figure out why this story matters in an age in which the president of the United States is on the record supporting same-sex marriage, and NBA player Jason Collins came out as gay last year. But Sam’s story will likely have a far more significant impact than either of these milestones. Here’s why:
President Obama certainly has a measure of influence, particularly among black audiences. When he first ran for president, data showed an “Obama effect” among black test-takers whose scores markedly improved when he won. But influencing test scores in a condensed time frame is very different from having a long-term impact on community behavior. For instance, so far there is no data to suggest that the image of the president’s nuclear family, comprised of two married parents raising their children and two dogs together, has significantly altered the landscape within the black community, in which single parenthood has become the norm. That is simply to say that altering social behavior in a meaningful way is a tall order for any one man, but it may be particularly tough for a president.

MLK Day 2014: Humanizing a King to Celebrate Him

By goodblacknews on January 20, 2014

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is welcomed with a kiss by his wife Coretta
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is welcomed with a kiss by his wife Coretta after leaving court in Montgomery, Ala., March 22, 1956. King was found guilty of conspiracy to boycott city buses in a campaign to desegregate the bus system, but a judge suspended his $500 fine pending appeal. (AP Photo/Gene Herrick)

On March 22, 1956, the 27-year-old Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was having a horrible day. He’d just been convicted for his role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and sentenced to pay $1,000 or spend 386 days in jail. After the ruling and motion to appeal, he walked out of the courthouse a temporarily free man, but his spirit was shaken.
All of a sudden, his wife Coretta rushed at him, threw her arms around him, and kissed him in front of about 300 people who’d gathered outside. The biggest smile ever captured on King swept across his face, and his eyes lifted to the heavens with the giddiness of a young man in love.
In the photo that caught this moment, we see a side of him that sometimes gets lost in our remembrances. For all the important things that Dr. King would go on to do in his life, that day he was just a regular young man whose rough day was made better by a little sugar from the one he loved.
Remembering King as a man, not just a legend
Today, the nation pauses for a moment to pay homage to the legacy of Dr. King. During his less than fifteen years in the national spotlight, he became the voice and embodiment of the Civil Rights Movement in America. Our perception of him is deeply influenced by the iconic pictures and films of King delivering powerful speeches, leading marches in the Deep South, and with his hand outstretched towards the sea of people at the 1963 March on Washington.
These many images and the society-shifting changes that his efforts helped bring about have elevated him to a heroic status with a larger-than-life character. This deification pushed him into a place in our memories that sometimes feels beyond our reach of comprehension as fellow mortals.