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Namwali
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Namwali
@namwalien
"I read books. I teach books. I write books. I think about books. It's one job." | "Writing to me is an advanced and slow form of reading."
-Toni Morrison
- I've seen this Morrison quote posted on Twitter TWICE today, BOTH TIMES with the last sentence lopped off: "It’s richer than being a white male writer because I know more and I’ve experienced more." WONDER WHY.“Being a black woman writer is not a shallow place but a rich place to write from. It doesn’t limit my imagination; it expands it,” Toni Morrison, who turns eighty-eight today, said. nyer.cm/3dmHaDR
- News: I’m joining the Harvard English department as full professor, starting Fall 2021 (after a year @CullmanNYPL ). Notwithstanding my general wariness of institutions, I’m very grateful and aware that this is a big deal for a black woman. And my mother would have been so proud!
- Re: Angela Davis landed on us. I'm not trying to defend anybody but it is actually infuriating to see people get taken in by a 20-second clip. If you watch the full episode, you learn: 1. Davis's mother grew up in foster care; her father didn't seem to know his real parentage.
- What if every time you read a canonical novel and loved it, you still had to wonder, EVERY TIME: "Would this author have hated me? Would this author have believed I was inferior to them or worthy of mockery?" What seething ambivalence lies at the heart of my literary education.
- Replying to @namwalien9. I don't watch this show. I distrust genetic/ genealogical projects. They feel quasi-eugenical and always yield the simplifications y'all bought into with that marketing clip and continue to perpetuate by reacting to it! 10. But the history itself? So complex, so interesting.
- Replying to @namwalien6. The episode also explores Davis's enslaved ancestors on her father's mother's side. There's an INCREDIBLE story about one of those ancestors, Isom, who fought to free his nephews from an illegal "apprenticeship" after the abolition of slavery. Her pride about this is palpable.
- "So much of music criticism... has gotten saddled with the idea that it’s all negative: If someone criticizes something, it’s out of anger, or bitterness, or jealousy.... Critique, for me, has to be an act of love—or else it’s a waste of time." thenation.com/article/hanif-…
- Honored to have had the chance to spend time and share words with this literary genius and revolutionary before his passing. theparisreview.org/interviews/788…
- Replying to @namwalien7. Throughout, Davis expresses her skepticism about the whole enterprise, her struggle with the information she's learning, her pain in learning about her enslaved ancestors, and her understandable wonder at learning about her family--remember, her mother grew up in foster care.
- Replying to @namwalien2. This means Davis has white granddaddies on both sides, which she didn't know. (Her father's father was the white neighbor 👀) 3. This also means the interracial relationships in Davis' family came AFTER slavery was abolished. They were secret relationships during Jim Crow.
