You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Celebrates Oakland, California's contribution to the national stage in terms of music, dance, visual arts, and literature over the past half century through vintage images, from the early days of Slim Jenkins's nightclub to the changing styles of Esther's Orbit Room and the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts. Original.
Trans Identity as Embodied Afrofuturism / Amber Johnson -- "I Luh God" : Erica Campbell, Trap Gospel and the Moral Mask of Language Discrimination / Sammantha McCalla -- The Conciliation Project as a Social Experiment : Behind the Mask of Uncle Tomism and the Performance of Blackness / Jasmine Coles & Tawnya Pettiford-Wates.
The image of Oakland, California has been tainted in the mainstream media with news reports focusing on violence in Oakland. Matt Werner explores a different narrative in Oakland in Popular Memory, interviewing young artists from Oakland, and established artists who've influenced Oakland musicians.Matt Werner, in the spirit of Studs Terkel, conducted long-form interviews from 2008-2012 which cover the 2008 election of President Obama, the shooting of Oscar Grant, and the Occupy Oakland protests. Werner spoke with these artists at length, discussing topics like race relations in Oakland in the post-Oscar Grant era, postmodern literary theory, and the changing landscape of the music industry during the digital revolution.Through these interviews, Oakland is seen as an engine of cultural innovation, as a city bustling with lively avant-garde art and music scenes, spanning from indie rock to spoken word to hip-hop. Oakland in Popular Memory captures those artists putting a new "there" in Oakland.
The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design is a 21st century statement on the intersection of the future of African people with art, culture, technology, and politics. This collection enters the global debate on the emerging field of Afrofuturism studies with an international array of scholars and artists contributing to the discussion of Black futurity in the 21st century. The contributors analyze and respond to the invisibility or mischaracterization of Black people in the popular imagination, in science fiction, and in philosophies of history.
The ideas and practices related to afrofuturism have existed for most of the 20th century, especially in the north American African diaspora community. After Mark Dery coined the word "afrofuturism" in 1993, Alondra Nelson as a member of an online forum, along with other participants, began to explore the initial terrain and intellectual underpinnings of the concept noting that “AfroFuturism has emerged as a term of convenience to describe analysis, criticism and cultural production that addresses the intersections between race and technology.” Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astroblackness represents a transition from previous ideas related to afrofuturism that were formed in the late 20th century around issues of the digital divide, music and literature. Afrofuturism 2.0 expands and broadens the discussion around the concept to include religion, architecture, communications, visual art, philosophy and reflects its current growth as an emerging global Pan African creative phenomenon.
Kahlil Joseph has collaborated with musicians FKA twigs, Flying Lotus, Sampha and Shabazz Palaces among many others. He has directed numerous films, music videos and advertisements across Africa, America and Europe. The award-winning filmmaker's disruptive style – which frequently merges visual representations of transcontinental experiences with the countercultural energies of Afrodiasporic music – challenges the Eurocentric biases underpinning Western media. At the same time, his works generate various contradictions and tensions because they are themselves products situated within an economic framework of neoliberal capitalism, at once offering alternative ways of being while, simulta...
This book examines a range of visual expressions of Black Power across American art and popular culture from 1965 through 1972. It begins with case studies of artist groups, including Spiral, OBAC and AfriCOBRA, who began questioning Western aesthetic traditions and created work that honored leaders, affirmed African American culture, and embraced an African lineage. Also showcased is an Oakland Museum exhibition of 1968 called "New Perspectives in Black Art," as a way to consider if Black Panther Party activities in the neighborhood might have impacted local artists’ work. The concluding chapters concentrate on the relationship between selected Black Panther Party members and visual culture, focusing on how they were covered by the mainstream press, and how they self-represented to promote Party doctrine and agendas.
From Labor to Reward is a pioneering, epic, and groundbreaking book that fills a huge void in American religious history, black religious history, and traditions of the black church. Until now, no other book has chronicled the rich religious experiences of black church beginnings in the Bay Area. Martha C. Taylor provides penetrating insight into the early makings of the black church in the Bay Area. With attention to detail, Taylor captures the joys, frustrations, and unity of black people who left the segregated Deep South, came to the Bay Area seeking freedom only to face similar adversities of segregation, racism, housing discrimination, KKK threats of violence, and other socio-political...
Grafton Tyler Brown—whose heritage was likely one-eighth African American—finessed his way through San Francisco society by passing for white. Working in an environment hostile to African American achievement, Brown became a successful commercial artist and businessman in the rough-and-tumble gold rush era and the years after the Civil War. Best known for his bird’s-eye cityscapes, he also produced and published maps, charts, and business documents, and he illustrated books, sheet music, advertisements, and labels for cans and other packaging. This biography by a distinguished California historian gives an underappreciated artist and his work recognition long overdue. Focusing on Graft...
Oakland has been shaped by the transcontinental railroad, freeways, earthquakes, and its location on the shores of San Francisco Bay. But what makes Oakland such an amazing city are the people who have called Oakland home over the years, like Mayor Samuel Merritt, who helped make Oakland the terminus of the transcontinental railroad; Elizabeth Flood, who worked to desegregate Oakland schools in the 1870s; and F.M. "Borax" Smith, who created the Key System. Oakland has been home to game-changing athletes like "father of modern tennis" Don Budge and Curt Flood, who helped bring free agency to sports; artists like writer Jack London, dancer Isadora Duncan, poet Joaquin Miller, and cartoonist Morrie Turner; and culture-shaping movements like the Black Panther Party. However, the impact of Oaklanders is not just historical. From Oscar Grant to Favianna Rodriguez to Marshawn Lynch to Jerry Brown, people in Oakland continue to shape not just "the Town," but the entire country.