Race-Talk Cultural Editor Adebe D.A. is a Toronto-born writer currently living in New York. She is a former research intern at the Applied Research Center, home of ColorLines magazine. A recent MA graduate in English/Cultural Studies, she writes on issues related to race, social justice, migration, and the phenomena of culture. She currently holds the honour of Toronto’s Junior Poet Laureate and is the author of a chapbook entitled Sea Change (Burning Effigy Press, 2007). Her debut full-length poetry collection, Ex Nihilo, will be published by Frontenac House in early 2010. Visit her blog at http://www.adebe.wordpress.com.
Guess who’s coming to brunch? Dating and the hybrid subject
“Show me whom to desire” induction / induction The loved being is desired because another or others have shown the subject that such a being is desirable: however particular, amorous desire is discovered by induction. – from A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978. I don’t have [...]
Enuf talk about men, focus on the women: A review of Tyler Perry’s “For Colored Girls”
January 6, 2011 Comments Off
Tyler Perry’s recent film For Colored Girls, based on the “choreo-poem” written by Ntozake Shange, explores the poetic, theatrical and existential aspects of living in the world as a woman of colour. Shange’s play, whose full title is “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf”, was first staged in 1974 [...]
Continue reading …The land that’s yours is mine, is shadows, which I see both dreaming and in the night when drums make our old selves dance, bring us to embrace those old ghosts weaving through. No one owns them or us, nor the fearful asymmetries of our lineage, of our Caribe we left for new callings, a [...]
Continue reading …Being interracial in Canada is about crossing borders: some imaginary, and some rigidly imposed. It is also about juggling with hyphens and margins, and struggling to carve out a space in Canada’s proclaimed multicultural imaginary – a space that, as many might argue, is largely make-believe in that it makes us believe that it’s better [...]
Continue reading …Crossposted from Colorlines Magazine Web Exclusive With a title as bold as Race, I was prepared for this play to go where no performance had before. Director David Mamet described his production as “a play about lies,” including the hidden truth that “there has always been, at the very least, a little bit of [...]
Continue reading …The ways in which Hollywood amalgamates – albeit uncritically and not always consciously – entertainment and pedagogy is necessary for any discussion around race on the big screen. When it comes to animation, this becomes an even larger issue. Walt Disney has long lent itself to a tradition of assuming aesthetic pleasure over critical [...]
Continue reading …“Deep in our history of struggle for freedom Canada was the North Star.” – Martin Luther King, Jr., CBC Massey Lectures, 1967 It is disturbing to see the tradition of blackface, which I, for one, was hoping had died off, make an alarming comeback. Even more disturbing is that the revival is taking place in [...]
Continue reading …Originally posted on Stopbigmedia.com What do Disney’s debut film, The Princess and the Frog, Mattel’s new Black Barbie line, and the American tour of the historic Ethiopian fossil, “Lucy,” have in common? Their stories present an opportunity for honest and successful discussions about race in the media. But what they really do is point to [...]
Continue reading …It’s 150 years later, and we’re still debating Darwin’s good old Origin of Species. A new exposition center, The Discovery Times Square Exposition, was launched in New York City, and featured the 3.2 million-year-old fossil known as “Lucy.” For many museum enthusiasts and ethnographers alike, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But the exhibit didn’t close [...]
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