I started Interminable Rambling in August 2015. On this site, I provide reflections on African American, American, and Southern Literature, American popular culture and politics, and pedagogy. Interminable Rambling arose out of the blog I maintained for the Ernest J Gaines Center. There, I wrote about items in the center’s archives, Gaines’ works, and texts that related to Gaines and Louisiana. When I moved on from the center, I started Interminable Rambling as a way to maintain a writing schedule.
As I prepared to teach my study travel course on identity in Belfast and before I arrived, I had a preconceived notion, of course, about the places I would visit and what I would encounter. Most of these impressions, apart from the things that my daughter told me about her time in Belfast, came from either academics,…
Ever since I discovered punk during my formative years, I have gravitated towards its political and social commentary, specifically the ways that it succinctly yet thoughtfully engages with issues impacting countless individuals. Just as rap served as a political and cultural response to the ways that the government disenfranchised and oppressed Black and Brown and…
Early in Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses, Gerry Devlin asks Cushla to accompany him to a friend’s house in Belfast for a party. On their way to the house, they encounter a checkpoint manned by young British soldiers. The young soldiers, one of whose “complexion was cratered with acne scars and his mouth smelled of Juicy Fruit,” interrogate…
Near the end of Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast (2021), a coming-of-age story set at the start of The Troubles in Belfast, the nine-year-old protagonist Buddy talks with his grandfather at the hospital. During their conversation, Buddy tells his grandfather that his family may move “over the water” because his dad found work in England; however, his mom tells…
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Interminable Rambling 