Tag: ta-nehisi coates

Categories
what's lit

‘Proud Family: Louder and Prouder’ Reboot Champions Black Literature

If you’re not looking closely, you may be missing the parade of nonfiction and fiction titles by Black authors being shown to the next generation of Proud Family viewers.

Originally debuting in 2001, The Proud Family became a fixture on the Disney Channel and ABC’s One Saturday Morning featuring an African American 14-year-old middle schooler named Penny Proud as she navigates friendships and family in the Los Angeles area. Disney+ rebooted the cartoon this year with 10 episodes streaming now under the title The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder. And this is giving the creators more freedom to get their racial justice message across screens to a wider audience witnessing the Black Lives Matter and the #BlackStoriesMatter movements.

The voice of Penny Proud since the show’s inception, Kyla Pratt is the star, with her cartoon doppelgänger, but for the new series Keke Palmer joins the cast to voice Maya, a social activist who’s a new transfer to their Willy T. Ribbs Middle School. The school is named for the first Black driver to qualify and race in the Indianapolis 500. The Easter eggs of activism are really hidden in Maya’s book choices throughout the episodes.

We’re introduced to Maya in the first episode “New Kids on the Block” where she and her brother KG, voiced by rap artist A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, move into the old home of original character Sticky, who was voiced by Orlando Brown. That character was written out most likely due to Orlando’s legal troubles over the years, but Penny and her group now have two new friends. Or so they think.

Maya detects she and Penny are not compatible based on Penny trying too hard to make a connection. After all, Maya is carrying a copy of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, a 2019 nonfiction book by sociologist and Princeton University professor Ruha Benjamin that examines how society’s focus on technology can reinforce White supremacy and push racial inequity.

Later in the premiere episode, Maya is in her school hallway, armed with a copy of Parable of the Sower, the 1993 post-apocalyptic climate fiction classic by Octavia E. Butler that is set in our current time period. A24 last year announced it secured the rights via Deadline to the Parable of the Sower and its sequel Parable of the Talents for a plan to turn the titles into two motion pictures with Garrett Bradley tapped to direct.

In second episode “Bad Influence(r),” Maya is carrying the civil rights graphic-novel memoir March: Book One by the late congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell in different scenes throughout the episode.

“It All Started With an Orange Basketball” is the third episode that explores how Penny’s love for basketball is squashed by the ambition of her father, Oscar Proud, hilariously voiced by comedian Tommy Davidson. This episode will be distributed in book form for early readers by Disney Press in September under the same name. Game scenes occur in the Bubba Wallace Recreation Center, named for the only present-day Black race car star who pushed for the ban of the Confederate flag at NASCAR events in 2020.

The episode also features Maya and LaCienega, Penny’s frenemy who’s a namesake of the famous South LA boulevard and voiced by Alisa Reyes of 1990s Nickelodeon’s All That fame, chatting in the Wendell Scott Regional Branch Library, named after the first Black race car driver to win a race in NASCAR’s Grand National Series.

LaCienega rips a copy of Ta-Nehisi Coates‘ Between the World and Me out of Maya’s hands to use as a prop to bump into Kareem, Penny’s sorta boyfriend voiced by Asante Blackk, to get his attention. He notices the selection and says it’s his favorite book, and LaCienega lies and says it’s her favorite, too. They walk into the sunset. 

Masquerading as the woke reader, LaCienega holds the book in other scenes while Maya is now reading James Baldwin’s 1963 nonfiction essay collection The Fire Next Time.

Another literary reference is in the episode “Home School” where Maya is reading Maya Angelou‘s 1969 autobiographical debut I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. (Perhaps, this character is named after one of our most influential Black female authors?) Even in the “Snackland” episode starring an animated Lizzo voiced as herself as the musical guest for the Proud family’s amusement park venture, Lizzo’s bodyguard character is reading The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, but she rips it into shreds proving she can destroy Oscar for skipping on Lizzo’s payment.

The book choices, along with the intentional naming of the buildings the characters frequent, demonstrate the ability to educate children and adults on important, sometimes underappreciated Black literature and Black figures via a kooky cartoon centered on a Black family and a racially diverse cast of characters.

Some of these books, such as Race After Technology, do not appear to have a mass marketing campaign. So, if you’re interested in the intersection of race and technology, for example, this book may not end up in your web, library, and bookstore searches.

Then for classics such Parable of the Sower and The Fire Next Time that are usually not on young adult reading lists, they can be left out of searches for books covering their topics. Along with highlighting the obscure and classic works, the cartoon gives props to the more recent best-sellers by Black authors that have dominated charts over the years like Between the World and Me and The Vanishing Half.

Disney+ renewed The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder for a second season.

Categories
what's lit

One World Authors Mark Banned Books Week With Conversation on Self-Education

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

One World hosted an event Wednesday featuring some of the most celebrated and debated authors of our time for a conversation on what they wished they had learned during their youth.

In honor of Banned Books Week, the Random House imprint invited authors via pre-recorded video interviews such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi, and Bryan Stevenson to mark the “annual celebration of the freedom to read” from Sept. 26 to Oct. 2.

“Banning books is something that’s happened for many, many years and then there’s also the long-standing practice of omitting entire histories and identities from school curriculum around this country, as well as the fact that many books simply never get published,” said event co-host Elizabeth Méndez Berry, the One World vice president and executive editor. “One World authors, many of them have actually dedicated their lives to writing the books that they were not able to read coming up.”

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, said she learned how histories and cultures were wiped away from her schooling when she was younger.

“I didn’t remember if there were certain books my schools were prohibited from teaching us when I was a child, but I do know that there were entire histories, and peoples, that were simply erased,” she said. “I was taught about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and how they were men who made their living off of human bondage, and that their primary occupation was that of being a slave owner.”

The New York Times journalist and Howard University professor also mentioned how Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption and other books have been banned from prisons. Helping place books in prisoners’ hands has become a growing civil rights issue with groups such as Noname Book Club starting a program to send books monthly to incarcerated readers.

Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, said she didn’t learn about Bacon’s Rebellion until she was learning about labor history in her twenties. The rebellion, which occurred in 1676 ignited by colonists’ failure to steal Native American lands, resulted in the burning of Virginia’s capital of Jamestown and united White indentured servants and Black slaves.

“Once the rebellion was crushed, the colonial plantation elite decided they needed to drive a permanent wedge between White and Black workers to keep them from ever joining forces against them,” she said. “Again, the post-Bacon laws in large part created the system of racial hierarchy that we take for granted as part of our history.” 

For modern history, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning author Cathy Park Hong said she didn’t recall learning in school about the Chinese Exclusion Act, and Japanese Americans living in World War II internment camps seemed like a “footnote.”

“In all of my English classes, I don’t recall reading a single novel or short story, or even a poem by an Asian American author,” she said. “Because of this, it took me a long time to realize I had permission to be a writer, because for so long, I didn’t think I had a place in American literature because I had no role models. In my history classes, too, I learned very little, if anything, about Asians in America.” 

Race and ethnicity in America wasn’t the only theme. Golem Girl: A Memoir author Riva Lehrer discussed her experience growing up disabled in the 1960s. She said though she went to a top school that wouldn’t put her on the path to becoming a sweatshop worker, there weren’t many discussions on what path she should take.

“What we didn’t get was any idea of what we could be in the world,” said Riva, a queer painter. “We got no encouragement to dream, to think about wanting be an engineer or a doctor or a botanist or all the things that would have been open to people back then at a normal school.”

Banned Books Week started in 1982 after the surge in more books being challenged by schools, libraries, and bookstores around the U.S. The top 10 challenged books of last year can be found here. The event is on YouTube.

Categories
what's lit

Singer Amerie Kicks Off New Book Club With ‘The Water Dancer’

Amerie announces her new book club / Instagram

Amerie, best known for her 2000s R&B singles Why Don’t We Fall In Love? and 1 Thing, announced on YouTube she will be launching her new social media book club with making The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates this month’s inaugural pick.

Over the past few years, Amerie has been reinventing herself as a literary talent with her video book, beauty, and lifestyle blog. She contributed to the forthcoming black girl magic anthology, A Phoenix First Must Burn, that’s being called “Beyoncé’s Lemonade for a teen audience.” Her editing credits include another young adult anthology, Because You Love To Hate Me, and she has plans in the works to release a debut novel. She made a surprise return to music last year with the twin albums, 4AM Mulholland and After 4AM.

“For so long, I know you’ve been wanting the book club, and I’ve been reading the comments, but I didn’t know how I exactly want to do it and I believe I figured it out,” Amerie said in her announcement video.

She said her book club will “feature books by authors sent to us an array of different perspectives, voices, and I hope we can come together and learn from each other, listen to one another, also be heard, and embrace and celebrate our differences, and come away from the whole thing somewhat changed.”

Instagram and YouTube will be the main outlets for the book club conversation. The selections will be announced on the first Wednesday of the month with reminders throughout the month and final conversations at the end of the month.

Oprah’s Book Club famously chose The Water Dancer as its first pick in its Apple-backed reincarnation.

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘The Water Dancer’ by Ta-Nehisi Coates


The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“The summoning of a story, the water, and the object that made memory real as brick: that was Conduction. What I might do with such a power was not my immediate concern, so much making it through that day.”

Tales of magical realism and the harsh reality of the Atlantic slave trade becomes intertwined in “The Water Dancer” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It tells the story of a man trying to recall memories of his long-lost mother and escape enslavement on a dying tobacco plantation in Virginia owned by his white father. Coates’ first novel moves slowly through the overuse of prose but emphasizes the decision of freedom and what it exactly means to the different characters.

Hiram Walker’s mother had been sold off years ago by his white father, Howell Walker, and Hiram wants to remember his mother. Other slaves in the community, called the Tasked, tell him he has this power to conjure the memory of his mother through the water.

The story really starts with Hiram riding over a bridge with his white brother, Maynard, where they fall into the water. Maynard doesn’t survive, and everyone is surprised Hiram survived in the water so long. He returns to his father’s plantation, but eventually decides to run after he’s blamed for Maynard’s death. Hiram runs with the girl he loves, Sophia, but they’re captured.

After weeks of torture, he’s returned to Corinne Quinn, a wealthy white woman who was betrothed to Maynard. It turns out Corinne is a part of the Underground aka the famous Underground Railroad. Hiram joins the effort, always wondering of Sophia’s fate and of the purpose of his powers as he figures out what it means to be really free.

Hiram seeking freedom and expecting everyone Tasked wants his version of freedom, regardless of who’s left behind, is an interesting concept that plays throughout the novel. It focuses on the division of families and how it was a fact of life, and if someone ran away, they would have to create a new life in the North and research where their loved ones had ended up. Not knowing the fate of a loved one haunts Hiram with his mother, an underdeveloped character that keeps getting mentioned yet there’s no sense of who she is. It’s reminiscent of Cora in “The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead because Cora’s mother had escaped but never sent for Cora, so there is anguish toward the mother; she’s not present, but the reader feels her impact.

This book made me appreciate Whitehead’s book more because the characters are better developed there. Hiram in Coates’ book tells the story in first-person narrative, but there are personality elements missing; he’s mostly stoic. He’s one of those narrators who falls behind other characters though we follow his actions.

The freedom definition theme saved the book. The magical realism gets muddled until the end where the history of African folklore related to water comes up. Though it’s brought up a lot, the water dancing leading to what you need isn’t believable enough, like the folklore isn’t fitted correctly to this story.

Length-wise, It’s a 400-page book that could’ve been done closer to 300 pages. Slavery in the Americas will always be a fascinating topic because of the legacy of not acknowledging its profound generational impact. The history itself in many cases overshadows a fictional story.

View all my reviews