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Posts tagged as “Toni Morrison”

East African Novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah Wins 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature

East African Novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah Wins 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature

By goodblacknews on October 8, 2021

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2021 was awarded to novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents,” according to the Swedish Academy.

He is the first Black writer to win in the Literature category since Toni Morrison in 1993.Gurnah was born in 1948 and grew up on the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean but arrived in England as a refugee in the end of the 1960s.

He has published ten novels, including Gravel Heart (2017), 1994’s Paradise, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and a number of short stories. The theme of the refugee’s disruption runs throughout his work.

The award comes with more than $1 million in prize money.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/07/1043436576/nobel-prize-literature-2021

Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Documentary “Twenty Pearls,” Narrated by Phylicia Rashad, Premieres March 26 on Xfinity Channel

Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Documentary “Twenty Pearls,” Narrated by Phylicia Rashad, Premieres March 26 on Xfinity Channel

By goodblacknews on March 26, 2021

The exclusive premiere of the documentary film Twenty Pearls: The Story of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated®, starts airing today, Friday, March 26 on Comcast NBCUniversal‘s newly-launched Black Experience on Xfinity Channel.

Narrated by AKA member Phylicia Rashād, directed by filmmaker Deborah Riley Draper and produced by Coffee Bluff Pictures, Twenty Pearls closely examines the founding and legacy of the first Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated®, which is regarded as one of the most significant and influential Black organizations in history.

The documentary tells a story of sisterhood. In 1908, nine Black women students enrolled at Howard University  created Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.®

Through narration, interviews and rarely seen archival materials, the audience will see the sorority’s impact on World War II, NASA, Civil Rights, Women’s Rights and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) culminating in the historic election of Kamala Harris as America’s first Black and South Asian woman Vice President.

Twenty Pearls features interviews with members of the sorority including Vice President Kamala Harris, Miss Universe Ireland 2019 Fionnghuala O’Reilly, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Fierst, great-granddaughter of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, International President and CEO of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated® Dr. Glenda Glover and many more.

Other notable AKAs include NASA mathematician and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Katherine Johnson, civil rights activist and icon Coretta Scott King, tennis champion Althea Gibson, and Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison.

“This is an extraordinary time to look back at our past to serve our future,” added Deborah Riley Draper. “A future where Black women are centered. Helming this documentary love letter to the founders of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the generations of women that followed in their footsteps and to all Black women everywhere is an honor. This is an important history for all of us to know and understand.”

“Telling our own story is essential to preserving our history and uplifting the culture,” said Alpha Kappa Alpha International President and CEO Dr. Glenda Glover. “Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated’s remarkable 113-year journey which began on the campus of Howard University is punctuated by stories of history makers, ceiling breakers, public servants and ordinary women who have changed the course of American history.  Through this beautifully written and narrated odyssey, this film highlights in undeniable ways the vision, courage, tenacity, determination and power of Black women while putting to bed the age-old questions about the relevance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities and the Divine Nine sororities and fraternities.”

Black Experience on Xfinity is a destination of Black entertainment, movies, TV shows, news and more. It features high-quality content from many of Xfinity’s existing network partners, while investing millions of dollars in fostering and showcasing emerging Black content creators.

Black Experience on Xfinity is available at home on Xfinity X1 and Flex, and on-the-go with the Xfinity Stream app,  At home, Xfinity subscribers can visit channel 1622 or simply say “Black Experience” into the Voice Remote to instantly enjoy its content.

Visit https://www.xfinity.com/learn/digital-cable-tv/black-experience to learn more about the Black Experience on Xfinity and other Black programming available on X1, Flex, and the Xfinity Stream app. 

Visit www.aka1908.com to learn more about Twenty Pearls, which premieres on today on Xfinity and is free for subscribers, and will be available on demand nationwide starting on March 30, 2021.

Toni Morrison “The Pieces I Am” American Masters Documentary Airs on PBS Tonight, June 23 (WATCH TRAILER)

Toni Morrison “The Pieces I Am” American Masters Documentary Airs on PBS Tonight, June 23 (WATCH TRAILER)

By goodblacknews on June 23, 2020

Pulitzer Prize winner, prolific author and professor Toni Morrison leads an assembly of her peers and critics on an exploration of the powerful themes she confronted throughout her literary career in The Pieces I Am, an artful and intimate meditation that examines the life and work of the legendary storyteller.

This “American Masters” documentary airs today, Tuesday, June 23 at 8/7c as part of PBS’s summer-long celebration of women trailblazers.

Official website: https://to.pbs.org/2XUCcSc | #ToniMorrisonPBS

R.I.P. Acclaimed Author Toni Morrison, 88, Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize Winner

R.I.P. Acclaimed Author Toni Morrison, 88, Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize Winner

By goodblacknews on August 6, 2019

Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Toni Morrison, who wrote the acclaimed novels “Beloved,” ”Song of Solomon,” “The Bluest Eye,” “Jazz,” and “Sula” among other works, has passed away at age 88.

According to yahoo.com, publisher Alfred A. Knopf announced that Morrison died Monday night at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. Morrison’s family issued a statement through Knopf saying she died after a brief illness.

“Toni Morrison passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends,” the family announced. “The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing.”

“Her writing was not just beautiful but meaningful — a challenge to our conscience and a call to greater empathy,” Obama wrote Tuesday on his Facebook page. “She was as good a storyteller, as captivating, in person as she was on the page.”

“Narrative has never been merely entertainment for me,” she said in her Nobel lecture. “It is, I believe, one of the principal ways in which we absorb knowledge.”

The second of four children of a welder and a domestic worker, Morrison was born Chloe Ardelia Wofford in Lorain, Ohio, a steel town outside of Cleveland. She was encouraged by her parents to read and to think, and was unimpressed by the white kids in her community.

Recalling how she felt like an “aristocrat,” Morrison believed she was smarter and took it for granted she was wiser. She was an honors student in high school, and attended Howard University because she dreamed of life spent among black intellectuals.

Author Toni Morrison and Curator Thelma Golden to Receive 2019 Awards from American Academy of Arts and Letters

By goodblacknews on April 29, 2019
Toni Morrison and Thelma Golden (photos via artsandletters.org)

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the recipients of its highest honors for excellence in the arts, to be presented at its annual ceremony in May. Toni Morrison will be awarded the Gold Medal for Fiction. The Gold Medal is awarded to those who have achieved eminence in an entire body of work.

Thelma Golden will be recognized with the Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts for her significant contribution as Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Sculptor Lee Bontecou will also be honored this year.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 as an honor society of the country’s leading architects, artists, composers, and writers. Early members included Henry James, Theodore Roosevelt, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton. The Academy’s 250 members are elected for life and pay no dues.

In addition to electing new members as vacancies occur, the Academy seeks to foster and sustain an interest in Literature, Music, and the Fine Arts by administering over 70 awards and prizes, exhibiting art and manuscripts, funding performances of new works of musical theater, and purchasing artwork for donation to museums across the country. This year’s total expenditures on awards and grants will be $1.2 million.

Activist and Educator Angela Davis' Papers Acquired by Harvard University's Schlesinger Library (VIDEO)

By goodblacknews on June 6, 2018

Detail photos show materials from the papers of Angela Davis that are now housed at the Schlesinger Library. (Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer)

by Colleen Walsh via news.harvard.edu
For almost 60 years Angela Davis has been for many an iconic face of feminism and counterculture activism in America. Now her life in letters and images will be housed at Harvard University.
Radcliffe College‘s Schlesinger Library has acquired Davis’ archive, a trove of documents, letters, papers, photos, and more that trace her evolution as an activist, author, educator, and scholar. The papers were secured with support from Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.
The FBI wanted poster for Davis (Courtesy Schlesinger Library)

“My papers reflect 50 years of involvement in activist and scholarly collaborations seeking to expand the reach of justice in the world,” Davis said in a statement. “I am very happy that at the Schlesinger Library they will join those of June Jordan, Patricia Williams, Pat Parker, and so many other women who have been advocates of social transformation.”
Jane Kamensky, Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library, sees the collection yielding “prize-winning books for decades as people reckon with this legacy and put [Davis] in conversation with other collections here and elsewhere.”
When looking for new material, Kamensky said the library seeks collections “that will change the way that fields know what they know,” adding that she expects the Davis archive to inspire and inform scholars across a range of disciplines.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. said that he’s followed Davis’ life and work ever since spotting a “Free Angela” poster on the wall at his Yale dorm. Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor, has worked to increase the archival presence of African-Americans who have made major contributions to U.S. society, politics, and culture. He called the Davis papers “a marvelous coup for Harvard.”
“She’s of enormous importance to the history of political thought and political activism of left-wing or progressive politics and the history of race and gender in the United States since the mid-’60s,” said Gates, who directs the Hutchins Center. “No one has a more important role, and now scholars will be able to study the arc of her thinking, the way it evolved and its depth, by having access to her papers.”
The acquisition is in keeping with the library’s efforts to ensure its collections represent a broad range of life experiences. In 2013 and 2014 an internal committee developed a diverse wish list, “and a foundational thinker and activist like Angela Davis was very naturally at the top,” said Kamensky.
Kenvi Phillips, hired as the library’s first curator for race and ethnicity in 2016, met with Davis in Oakland last year to collect the papers with help from two archivists. Together they packed 151 boxes of material gathered from a storage site, an office, and Davis’ home.

Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison Honored by Princeton University with Dedication of Morrison Hall

By goodblacknews on November 25, 2017
Photo: Princeton University
Author and Professor Toni Morrison at Morrison Hall dedication (Photo: Princeton University)
via blavity.com
Princeton University showed respect and honor to author Toni Morrison by dedicating Morrison Hall on Friday, Nov. 17. Morrison – who in 1993 became the first African American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature – is the Emeritus Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities at the university. The building dedication took place after Morrison’s keynote address at the Princeton and Slavery Project Symposium.
“This is a very, very special, beautiful occasion for me,” Morrison said.
During the opening fort he dedication ceremony, Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber emphasized the importance of Morrison Hall, referring to it as a “181-year-old building that is the home and the heart of the undergraduate college at Princeton University.” Previously, Morrison Hall was called West College, and inside, students can find the Office of the Dean of the College. On Nov. 14, a portrait of Morrison created by Paul Wyse was hung in the building.
“How fitting that the first building named through this process will now honor a teacher, an artist and a scholar who not only has graced our campus with the highest imaginable levels of achievement and distinction, but who has herself spoken eloquently about the significance of names on the Princeton campus,” Eisgruber said, referring to an address Morrison delivered in 1996 at Princeton’s 250th convocation, titled “The Place of the Idea; the Idea of the Place.”
Other speakers at the ceremony included Morrison’s close friend Ruth Simmons, president of Prairie View A&M University and her former student MacKenzie Bezos who graduated from Princeton in 1992 and is now an author. In 2016, the university trustees approved naming and dedicating one of the institution’s most prominent buildings after Morrison. Simmons helped recruit Morrison to Princeton when Simmons was acting director of the Center for African American Studies. In her remarks, Simmons said, “It doesn’t take much for Toni to get a swelled head; this is going to take it over the top.”
Morrison joined the Princeton University faculty as a literature and creative writing professor in 1989. She transferred to emeritus status in 2006. According to the Princeton, the Sula writer played a major role in expanding the university’s commitments to the creative and performing arts and to African American Studies. In 1994, Morrison founded the Princeton Atelier, which brings together undergraduate students in interdisciplinary collaborations with acclaimed artists. Morrison’s papers, which were already a part of the university library’s permanent collection since 2014, became available to students, faculty and worldwide scholars in 2016 for research purposes.
To read full article, go to: https://blavity.com/princeton-university-honors-nobel-laureate-toni-morrison-by-dedicating-morrison-hall

Author and MacArthur Fellow Jesmyn Ward Wins 2nd National Book Award for ‘Sing, Unburied, Sing’

By goodblacknews on November 18, 2017
Jesmyn Ward attends the 68th National Book Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on November 15, 2017 in New York City, NY, USA. Photo by Dennis Van Tine/Sipa USA(Sipa via AP Images) 
by Paula Rogo  via essence.com

MacArthur “Genius” grantee Jesmyn Ward took home the National Book Award prize for Fiction Wednesday, marking the second time she has won the prestigious award.
She took the top prize for her book “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” a Mississippi-based family epic that, according to the New York Times, “grapples with race, poverty and the psychic scars of past violence.” She previously won the fiction award in 2011 for her novel “Salvage the Bones.”
Critics have compared her writing to works by greats like Toni Morrison and William Faulkner. In her acceptance speech Ward said that she had received her fair amount of rejections for her subject matter.
“Throughout my career, when I have been rejected, there was sometimes subtext, and it was this: People will not read your work because these are not universal stories,” she told the audience. “I don’t know whether some doorkeepers felt this way because I wrote about poor people or because I wrote about black people or because I wrote about Southerners. As my career progressed and I got some affirmations, I still encountered that mindset every now and again.
Eitherway, she added, many people were able to connect with her characters and stories: “You looked at me, at the people I love and write about, you looked at my poor, my black, my Southern children, women and men — and you saw yourself. You saw your grief, your love, your losses, your regrets, your joy, your hope.“
Earlier this year, she was a recipient of a MacArthur ”genius grant“ from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Source: https://www.essence.com/culture/jesmyn-ward-second-national-book-award-sing-unburied-sing

‘Get Out’ Inspires New College Course Taught by Tananarive Due, Sci-Fi Author and UCLA Professor

By goodblacknews on September 8, 2017

(photo via elev8.hellobeautiful.com)

by Tami August via elev8.hellobeautiful.com
This fall, award-winning science fiction writer and UCLA professor Tananarive Due will teach a “Get Out”–inspired course called “Sunken Place: Racism, Survival, and Black Horror Aesthetic,” i09 reports. Jordan Peele‘s directorial debut, which couches America’s history of racist scientific experimentation in a romantic horror plot, continues to make waves months after it became a blockbuster hit. “Get Out” inspired Due to consider the history of Black horror in fiction and film.
In an interview with i09’s Evan Narcisse, Due calls herself a “horror head” who considers horror a subgenre of speculative fiction, where she reigns supreme. Winner of The American Book Award, the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature, and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award, Due has published over ten novels since 1995. She told i09 that “Get Out” has given film executives a way to understand her own horror adaptations for the screen.
Prior to “Get Out,” Due noted, the most popular contemporary Black horror film was “Beloved,” the movie adaptation of Toni Morrison‘s novel that didn’t perform as well in the box office as it did in the bookstore. “Get Out” may have helped Due move forward in her screenwriting projects, but it also prompted her to look back at the genre’s Black history. Due said that for African Americans, the horror genre is “a great way to address this awful, festering wound in the American psyche, the slavery and genocide that was present during our nation’s birth.”
The professor mentioned film examples such as “Blacula,” “Def by Temptation,” and “Tales From the Hood.” She also plans to teach the short fiction of W.E.B. DuBois, whose story “The Comet” imagines a Black man and White woman as the sole survivors of apocalypse in the “era of lynching.” Due said, “These are two very different artists in two very different times, but DuBois’ story is a great companion, in a way, to what Jordan Peele was doing with the Black man and White woman in his movie.”
Source: ‘Get Out’ Inspires New College Course | Elev8

NYU Professor and Novelist Zadie Smith to Receive Langston Hughes Medal for Writing

By goodblacknews on September 7, 2017

Zadie Smith (photo via lithub.com)

via jbhe.com
Zadie Smith, the acclaimed novelist who is a professor of creative writing at New York University, has been selected to received the Langston Hughes Medal from the City College of New York. The medal honors writers of poetry, drama, fiction, biographies, and critical essays from throughout the Black diaspora. Professor Smith will honored on November 16 at City College’s annual Langston Hughes Festival.
Previous winners of the Langston Hughes Medal include James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Walter Mosley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Octavia Butler, August Wilson, and Edwidge Danticat. Smith is the author of five novels including her latest work Swing Time (Penguin Books, 2016). She also published an essay collection Changing My Mind (Penguin Books, 2009) and writes frequently for the New Yorker magazine and the New York Review of Books.
A native of London, Professor Smith is a graduate of Kings College of the University of Cambridge. She joined the faculty at New York University in 2010.
Source: Zadie Smith of New York University to Receive the Langston Hughes Medal : The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education