The Black Interior: Essays

With a poet's precision and an intellectually adventurous spirit, Elizabeth Alexander explores a wide spectrum of contemporary African American artistic life through literature, paintings, popular media, and films, and discusses its place in current culture. In The Black Interior, she examines the vital roles of such heavyweight literary figures as Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, and Rita Dove, as well as lesser known, yet vibrant, new creative voices. She offers a reconsideration of afro-outr painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, the concept of race-pride in Jet magazine, and her take on Denzel Washington's career as a complex black male icon in a post-affirmative action era. Also available is Alexander's much heralded essay on Rodney King, Emmett Till, and the collective memory of racial violence.

Alexander, who has been a professor at the University of Chicago and Smith College, and recently at Yale University, has taught and lectured on African American art and culture across the country and abroad for nearly two decades. In The Black Interior, she directs her scrupulous poet's eye to the urgent cultural issues of the day. This lively collection is a crucial volume for understanding current thinking on race, art, and culture in America.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 01/01/2004
ISBN: 9781555973933
Pages: 208
Weight: 0.59lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.26w x 0.68d
Award: Hurston/Wright LEGACY Award - Nominee

Review Citations: Library Journal 11/01/2003 pg. 106
Kirkus Reviews 11/01/2003 pg. 1297
Booklist 12/15/2003 pg. 736
Booklist 01/01/2004 pg. 794
Library Journal 02/01/2004 pg. 85
Multicultural Review 06/01/2004 pg. 63