Title:
In search of a beautiful freedom : new and selected essays
Author:
Publication Date:
2023
Publication Information:
New York, NY : W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., [2023]
©2023.
Physical Description:
xiii, 370 pages : 21 cm
ISBN:
9780393355772
Abstract:
Lively, insightful writings on Black music, feminism, literature, and events from a "masterful critic and master teacher" (Walton Muyumba, Boston Globe).
In Search of a Beautiful Freedom brings together the best work from Farah Jasmine Griffin's rich forays on music, Black feminism, literature, the crises of Hurricane Katrina and COVID-19, and the Black artists she esteems. She moves from evoking the haunting strength of Odetta and the rise of soprano popular singers in the 1970s to the forging of a Black women's literary renaissance and the politics of Malcolm X through the lens of Black feminism. She reflects on pivotal moments in recent American history--including the banning of Toni Morrison's Beloved--and celebrates the intellectuals, artists, and personal relationships that have shaped her identity and her work.
Contents:
Learning how to listen -- Ladies sing Miles -- When Malindy sings: a meditation on Black women's vocality -- Returning to Lady Day: a reflection on two decades "in search of Billie Holiday" -- Songs of experience: Odetta -- Quiet, stillness, and longing to be free: the ethereal soul of Syreeta Wright, Minnie Riperton, and Deniece Williams -- Following Geri's lead -- Look where your hands are now -- Wrestling till dawn: on becoming an intellectual in the age of Toni Morrison -- Albert Raboteau: an appreciation (drawn from remarks on the occasion of his retirement from Princeton University, April 26, 2013) -- Minnie's sacrifice: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's narrative of citizenship -- Zora Neale Hurston's radical individualism -- Hunting communists and negroes in Ann Petry's The Narrows -- "It takes two people to confirm the truth": the jazz fiction of Sherley Ann Williams and Toni Cade Bambara -- Learning how to listen: Ntozake Shange's work as aesthetic primer -- Remaking the everyday: the interior worlds of Kathleen Collins's fiction and film -- A place of freedom: Gayl Jones's Brazilian epic -- Treating the serpent's sting -- Textual healing: claiming Black women's bodies, the erotic, and resistance in contemporary novels of slavery -- "Ironies of the saint": Malcolm X, Black women, and the price of protection -- Conflict and chorus: reconsidering Toni Cade's The Black Women: An Anthology -- That the mothers may soar and the daughters may know their names: a retrospective of Black feminist literary criticism -- At last...?: Michelle Obama, Beyoncé, race, and history -- One crisis and possibility -- On the fourth anniversary of September 11 -- Human rights and the Katrina evacuees -- DNC day 2: will America accept First Lady Michelle? -- Loving Billie Holiday doesn't mean Black girls aren't suffering: a response to Joshua DuBois and My Brother's Keeper -- Teaching African American literature during COVID-19 -- Banning Toni Morrison's books doesn't protect kids. It just sanitizes racism -- Ancient histories and new worlds: Allison Janae Hamilton.
Language:
English
