Last post, I wrote about the LES Reading Group that we are conducting this July. When I read Smith, her voices echoes through the years, speaking to this moment both nationally and internationally. I often wonder, and I hope this will be part of the reading group conversation, how she would react to this moment. How she would engage with social media. How she … Read More Lillian E. Smith Reading Group: Part II
The more I read Lillian Smith, the more her voice resonates with the current moment. I do searches through the journal she edited with her life-long partner Paula Snelling, and each issues contains articles that, while published in the 1930s or 1940s, As well, the more I speak with people about Smith, I realize that people do not know her, at least they do … Read More Lillian E. Smith Reading Group: Part I
+ Elizabeth Austin, frank yerby, frantz fanon, gone with the wind, hbo max, Kimberely Nichele Brown, lillian e smith, margaret mitchell, naacp, paula snelling, walter white, white magnolias
Last week, John Ridley, Academy Award winner for adapted screenplay for 12 Years a Slave, spurred on calls fro HBO Max to remove David O Selznick’s film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind from its streaming service. Ridley points out that the film, “as part of the narrative of the ‘Lost Cause,’ romanticizes the Confederacy in a way that continues to give … Read More Gone With the Wind and the Mythologized South
+ cynical, hosea easton, lillian e smith, paula snelling, propaganda, sho baraka, white supremacy, william apess
Every time I listen to Propaganda and Sho Baraka’s “Cynical,” new lines stick out to me. This time, the first few lines of Sho Baraka’s verse jumped out, mainly because of the ways they relate to a lot of my recent posts about the effects of racism on children, especially white children who imbibe racist ideas and white supremacy then regurgitate it, generation after … Read More The Narcissism of White Supremacy
+ dorie miller, dorothy malcolm, george dorsey, gwendolyn brooks, lewis jones, lillian e smith, mae murray dorsey, moore's ford lynching, paula snelling, Piedmont College, roger malcolm, south today
Over the past few months, I have been making brief videos for Twitter. These videos are for the Lillian E. Smith Center’s profile, and each video focuses on some aspect of Smith’s work, usually connecting it to other authors and artists. Over the next couple of posts, I want to share a few of these videos. I will include the scripts I wrote and … Read More LES Center Videos: I
Interminable Rambling 