Articles & STORIES
LOS ANGELES TIMES |BLACK ACADEMIC FREEDOM (W/ A. LAMONT WILLIAMS)
June 29 2023
How California’s law against red states is curtailing Black academic freedom.
THE MADISON REVIEW | THE CHITTLIN’ TEST: QUESTION 1
Spring 2023
Question 1. A "handkerchief head" is:
(a) a cool cat, (b) a porter, (c) an Uncle Tom
OMNIUM GATHERUM QUARTERLY | THE WRITER
Spring 2023
Once upon a time, the former POTUS tried to publish his creative writing in small literary venues and entertained dreams of making his way in the world as an ink-stained scribe.
ALTA | Special report: a state of extremes
January 10, 2023
A tour of community colleges reveals that students’ hardships and opportunities—like all things in California—are unequally distributed.
ALTA | She Who Remembers
April 5, 2022
As a playwright, an activist, and Oakland’s inaugural poet laureate, Ayodele Nzinga boldly forges new narratives from the Black diaspora.
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FICTION 1980-2020 | URBAN FICTION
March 2022
This entry chronicles the development of urban fiction from 1980 through the present day.
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS | A complicated relationship: How california’s community colleges educate future police and why our curriculum needs to change (W/ Rubén Mendoza)
October 4, 2021
Professor Rubén Mendoza contacted me to discuss a revised community college curriculum for students who aspire to work as police officers.
July 28, 2021
ELECTRIC LIT | AFRO-LATIN@ WRITERS
African-descended populations peopled Central and South America in large numbers long before they were deposited by slavers in places like Jamestown, Virginia and Plymouth, Massachusetts.
July 2, 2021
LOS ANGELES TIMES | Let Her Run
Sha’Carri Richardson placed first in the women’s 100-meter event at the U.S. Olympic trials in June.
LITERARY HUB | 11 Books of Black Black Humor
June 22, 2021
How Black Writers Capture the Comedy and Dark Absurdity of Life in America.
REMEZCLA | The capitol insurrection and black-brown solidarity (with Jean Guerrero)
January 7, 2021
We Must Name & Confront the Threat of the White Mob.
SUBNIVEAN | The Blessèd of the Earth
2020
The young man enters alone and registers himself, voice muffled and catching with anxiety, body rigid with fear, breath coming in short tight bursts.
October 26, 2020
ALTA | One Coyote
Coming of age during the 1990s in an Inland Empire suburb amid dogs, snakes, scorpions—and racism.
LOS ANGELES TIMES | The grim double consciousness black NBA players must navigate
September 1, 2020
This double consciousness is built into the troubled relationship of Black people to capitalism itself.
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS | Racism, cop curriculum and campus safety
August 28, 2020
In the academic setting, a training that sensitizes future officers to race, gender, sexual orientation, and economic differences, tensions, and histories is imperative.
WORDS, BEATS & LIFE | The global journal of hip-hop culture, VOL. 7, ISSUE 2
2019
While it is difficult to imagine the genre ever receiving much mainstream critical acclaim, that was never the goal of these books.
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS | The Red Summer
August 15, 2019
Red Summer 1919/2019: The 100th Anniversary of a Current Crisis
July 16, 2019
CAGIBI: A LITERARY SPACE | Race
Rockwood didn’t have no elementary school so it sent its children many blocks away to learn numbers, cut up the King’s English and forget what innocence was.
March 27, 2019
OXFORD BIBLIOGRAPHIES | AFRICAN AMERICANS IN LOS ANGELES
The word “California” derives from Spanish novelist Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo’s bastardization of the Arabic “khalifa.” Montalvo’s use is probably a relic of the Moorish occupation of Spain. Calafia, the black warrior queen of Montalvo’s 1510 novel Las sergas de Esplandián, ruled the mythic island of California.
BOOM CALIFORNIA | UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS | Welcome children: stories of escape and a land after history
June 20, 2018
NASP was inspired by the unacknowledged toil of immigrant laborers.
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS | To be continued, or who lost the civil war?
October 12, 2017
“THE VICTORS WRITE the histories,” so the maxim goes.
LITERATURE FOR LIFE | Friday
2016
Luster Little bent over the bathtub, spreading his khakis lengthwise across its still water.
CONNOTATION PRESS | To the Chi: imagining, recounting and re-thinking three Chicago migration narratives
2016
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS | Post-Mortem Morning: Oakland and the Remains of the Left
November 25, 2016
NOVEMBER 9, 2016, black, and spears of metallic blue dawn. It is morning in East Oakland.
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS | DR. Ben Carson, Thug Life and Malcolm X
December 15, 2015
BEN CARSON just ain’t the phenomenon he was a few weeks ago. Still, at this moment in America, he’s both more and less than history.
POPMATTERS.COM | Hidden game and complex fate: exploited athletes exploit the exploiting system
There is a game hidden behind the basketball courts and football fields of our universities, an unscrupulous match that mostly advantages the institutions themselves.
8 April, 2015
POPMATTERS.COM | At the core of technology is a human: an interview with Ayori Selassie
16 February 2015
As a young professional in the entrepreneurial world of Silicon Valley, Ayori Selassie argues that technology's primary purpose should be to serve human needs first and foremost.
POST-SOUL SATIRE: BLACK IDENTITY AFTER CIVIL RIGHTS | Editors James D. Donahue and Derek C. Maus | University of Mississippi Press | Coal, charcoal and chocolate comedy: the satire of John Killens and Mat Johnson
July 2014
This chapter compares two depictions of Harlem, John Killen’s The Cotillion and Mat Johnson’s Hunting in Harlem.
SPARKLE + BLIND 47 | QUIET LIGHTNING | Editors Meghan Thornton and Ian Tuttle | Fresno Gone
2013
sparkle + blink is produced in conjunction with the monthly submission-based reading series Quiet Lightning, which usually takes place in San Francisco.
BOOM CALIFORNIA | UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS | Justice and Time: Before and After Oscar Grant
Summer 2012
Before and after Oscar Grant. “The arc of the moral universe is long but it does not necessarily bend toward justice…”