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Ntozake Shange, Who Wrote ‘For Colored Girls,’ Is Dead at 70

Laura Collins-Hughes New York Times
Ntozake Shange, a spoken-word artist who morphed into a playwright, died on Saturday. Ms. Shange was a champion of black women and girls, and in her trailblazing, she expanded the sense of what was possible for other black female artists.

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The Origin of Others

Samantha Fu LSE Review of Books
In this book, based on a series of lectures given at Harvard University in 2016, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison offers her insights into how discrimination and animus cross racial and ethnic lines occurs.

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Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Barracoon’

Angela Helm The Root
This work by Zora Neale Hurston, the famed author of the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), has surfaced after over eight decades. It is the autobiography, as transcribed by Hurston, of the life of one of the last persons enslaved in Africa and brought to this country.

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Other People’s Children, Part 2: Stories in the Aftermath, or “The Hate U Give”

Jonathan Alexander Los Angeles Review of Books
The March 18 killing of 22-year old Stephon Clark by Sacramento Police once again calls our attention to the racist aspect of the problem of civilians murdered by law enforcement. Angie Thomas's award-winning Young Adult novel is among the most recent literary responses to this crisis.

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Marriage under Adversity

Emily West Common-Place: A Journal of Early American Life
This timely piece of work reminds us that the rights we sometimes take for granted have not always been available to all.

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“Up to Their Necks in Fuel”: On Patricia Smith’s Incendiary Art

Jonathan Farmer Kenyon Review
This poet and this book have just won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award based at Claremont Graduate University. The prize is given to a mid-career poet, and is one of the top literary prizes given in the United States. It is a significant testament to the power of Smith's work. This review shows wide-ranging and powerful art that Patricia Smith practices.

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Audre Lorde’s ‘Your Silence Will Not Protect You’

Bridget Minamore The White Review
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was one of the most significant U.S. writers of the last quarter of the 20th Century. She described herself as "Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet." This new collection of her poetry and prose allows readers to remind themselves of her thought and its significance.

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The Black Novelist History Forgot

Robert B. Stepto  Washington Post
Himes was a pivotal and versatile post WW II-era American novelist whose work influenced several generations of African American and other writers. A new biography of the novelist is drawing national attention.
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