Black Excellence Month: Day 5

Lupita Nyong'o
Film Director & Academy Award Nominated Actress
1983 - 

 

 "Racism is not dead. It’s not. And that’s why this film is so important. To understand American society today, it starts with these kinds of stories, and the fact that they haven’t been dealt with yet. There’s work to be done. There are apologies that need to be sought and apologies that need to be offered. And that’s on a political level and a social level and an individual level and a communal level."

 -Lupita Nyong'o

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Recommended Watching:

•  12 Years a Slave
• Discussing Family on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
• The Hollywood Report: Actresses Roundtable
• The Backstory: Vogue
• Discussing Acting on the Queen Latifah Show
• The View
• Arise Entertainment Interview
• DP/30 Interview
• Critics' Choice Awards
• 12 Years a Slave: Cast and Producers
• Popcorn with Peter Travers

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Recommended Reading:

•  Black Been Beautiful
• On Coming to America
• The Fear that Guided Her Performance

Well Suited Wednesday

Mack Wilds
Grammy Nominated Recording Artist & Actor
1989 - 

 "Some things come with time and patience. You can grow within your craft, especially if you stay at it."

-Mack Wilds

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Recommended Watching:

• The Wire
• Red Tails
• 90210
• The Secret Life of Bees
• Miracle's Boys
• Michael Lee: The Wire
• I Will Not Lose
• The Truth With Elliot Wilson
• BHL Next
• First Time Grammy Nominee Vlog
• Black and Latino
• Mack's Story 
• Complex: Mack Wilds Talks Growth 
• Public Schools, Rap Music, and Black America 
• Speak Dreams into Existence

Listen/Watch:

• Own It
• New York: A Love Story (iTunes)
• Cold
• Freestyle on Toca Tuesday

Recommended Reading:

• Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life by Marc Lamont Hill
• Staten Island's Mack Wilds Scores Grammy Nomination
• New Music to Know
• On His Move From Acting to Singing
• The End of The Wire

Kai Davis - Black Girl

Kai Davis is phenomenal. Check out her facebook page.

Black Excellence Month: Day 4

Quvenzhané Wallis
2003 - 
Oscar Nominated Actress 

"Nothing else matters except that I have fun, and I'm still having fun."

- Quvenzhané Wallis

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Recommended Watching:

• Beasts of the Southern Wild
• 12 Years a Slave
• Beasts of the Southern Wild featurette 
• Virtuosos Award
• Are You Ashamed of Your Name?
• Quvenzhané on the Oscar Nomination

Recommended Reading:

• The Thing About Being A Black Little Girl in the World
• Quvenzhané Wallis Goes Puppy Purse Shopping with Us
• Quvenzhané and the Tweet
• Quvenzhané Covers Entertainment Weekly
• Attacks on Our Young, Gifted and Black
• Say My Name

Because it's impossible to find the video of the reporter from Associated Press deciding to chance Quvenzhané's name to Annie, I'll post this video instead.

"give your daughters difficult names. give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. my name makes you want to tell me the truth. my name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right."

-Warsan Shire

Black Men Monday

Cory Booker
1969 - 
Unites States Senator

"In the end, I'm not as interested in what you have to tell or sell as in how you choose to live and give."

-Cory Booker

Recommended Watching:

• Brick City
• Stanford University Commencement Address 2012
• Yale Class Day 2013
• Fireside Chat with Cory Booker
• Yeshiva University

Recommended Reading:

• Cory Booker on the War on Drugs
• Historic Opportunity
• Cory Booker's Huffington Post Articles

Black Excellence Month: Day 3

Toni Morrison
Nobel Prize Winning Novelist Professor Editor
1931 -

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” 

-Toni Morrison

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Recommended Reading:

• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
•  Sula by Toni Morrison
• Love by Toni Morrison
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• Paradise by Toni Morrison
• A Mercy by Toni Morrison
• Jazz by Toni Morrison
• Tar Baby by Toni Morrison
• Home by Toni Morrison
• Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison
• The Dancing Mind by Toni Morrison
• A Context for Understanding Morrison's Work by Susan R. Bowers
• Self, Society, and Myth in Toni Morrison's Fiction by CA Davis
• Toni Morrison talks Race and Gender
• Fictive Strategies and Cinematic Representations in Toni Morrison's Beloved

Recommended Watching:

• Toni Morrison: Home
• The Film Archive: Toni Morrison Interview
• Language, Evil, and the White Gaze
• Altruism and the Literary Imagination
• An Evening with Toni Morrison
• Vanderbilt Senior Day
• Toni Morrison on Winning the Nobel Prize
• Lifetime Achievement Award
• Nobel Lecture
• Medal of Freedom

Links:

•  The Toni Morrison Society 

 “The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own story means you can always choose the tone. It also means that you can invent the language to say who are you and what you mean.”

 -Toni Morrison.

Happy Super Bowl Sunday

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Friendly reminder that black male athletes are people just like us. We project this hyper-masculine superhuman persona on to players and forget that they are real people whose lives are more than the sport they play. They exist for more than just entertainment. They are men with their own thoughts, goals, ambitions, and lives. I really wonder what people really mean when they say that they're shocked to see that a professional football player is well-spoken or "very articulate." Why is that a shock and why are fans fans surprised that someone they idolize for their physical abilities can be well-spoken as well?

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Recommended Reading:

• Thug Label for NFL Player Must End
•  Richard Sherman, Racial Coding and Bombastic Brainiacs
•  Theorizing on the Stereotyping of Black Male Athletes
•  Blacks, Sports, and Lingering Racial Stereotypes
•  African Americans in Pro Football
•  Breaking the Line
•  Gridiron Gauntlet

Recommended Watching:

• http://youtu.be/Jb09TV9PPRk
• The Black Bruins
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm4n0Q3CYpw 
• Breaking the Racial Barriers in the NFL

Black Love: The Obamas

The Obama Family
First Family of the United States 
President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Malia & Sasha Obama 

"There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made."

-Michelle Obama

♥

"It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today."

-President Barack Obama

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Recommended Watching:

•  First Lady on the Importance of A Black President
• Michelle Obama and The Miami Heat
• Moorehouse Commencement Address
• Michelle Obama's DNC Speech 2012
• Obama Family Interview
• President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama on the View  

Recommended Reading:

• Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama
• Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community by Michelle Obama
• Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters by Barack Obama
• The Black History of the White House
• 14 Things You Didn't Know About Michelle Obama
• Michelle Obama On Family Life
• Appeal of a Young Black Family in the White House
• Michelle Obama and Motherhood

Black Excellence Month: Day 2

Ruby Bridges
1954 - 
Activist. Civil Rights Leader. 

At six years old, she made history by being the first black student to go to an all white school in the South. Her bravery inspires us to keep moving forward through negativity. Her story reminds us that our access to education is something that we should always value.

"I believe that history should be taught in a different way. History definitely should be taught the way it happened—good, bad or ugly. History is sacred. For me history is a foundation and the truth."

-Ruby Bridges

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Recommended Reading: 
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•  Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges
•  Ruby Goes to School by Ruby Bridges
•  Fifty Years of Segregation 
• Brown V. Board of Education Decision
• First Step Taken to Ending Segregation
• The Story of Ruby Bridges by Ruby Bridges
•  In a Class of Only One by Toby Mac and Michael Tait
• A Class of One 

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Recommended Watching:
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•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R2P-6j_5h4 
•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzuS8CI-sSI
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecBORXfap9A
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CgTYGI2mi8
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKyQV0-z6HE
• Disney’s Ruby Bridges (1998)

Black Excellence Month: Day 1

Audre Lorde

Black Feminist Visionary Warrior Lesbian Poet 
1934 - 1992

 

 "I am a Black Feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable."

 -Audre Lorde

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Recommended Reading:

•  Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
• Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde
• Uses Of The Erotic: The Erotic As Power by Audre Lorde
• The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde
• Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis De Veaux
•  Indo-Caribbean Feminisms and Heteronormativity http://sta.uwi.edu/crgs/march2013/journals/Pragg.pdf
•  Conversations with Audre Lorde by Joan Wylie Hall
• The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House

I read Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name last year on a train ride from New York to Florida. It holds a special place in my heart. Her writing is so beautiful and touching. I feel so grateful to get a glimpse into her younger life. I felt a great connection to her in this book. It reminds me that I come from greatness and of the unique struggles of the women who lived before me for I would not be who I am today if it were not for them. It left me completely inspired.

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Recommended Watching:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eMvnxxFhbM
•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_KYZkRY9pA 
•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HBD4VRqnh4
•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diHzbQNyO2k

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Links:

• ·      http://alp.org/
• ·      http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/audre-lorde