Although Pearl Primus was born in Trinidad and grew up in New York City, she identified strongly with her African heritage from a young age. When, in 1948, she was awarded a fellowship to pay for a trip, she wrote, “My soul hopped out of my body, swung on the
Born in 1886, John Graham was a progressive promoter of surrealism, cubism, and abstraction, as well as a mentor and confidant to the likes of Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de Kooning (the four artists collectively called themselves the Four Musketeers in the ‘30s). Last week, an exhibition entitled
Was Maximilien Robespierre (1758-94) a heroic martyr of the French Revolution, or a ruthless tyrant? In his new biography Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life, Peter McPhee combines new research and a deep understanding of the French Revolution to provide a fresh and nuanced portrait of one of history’s most controversial figures. Here the author discusses Robespierre, and explains the
Peculiarly, the story of Bill Traylor is both intensely local and transnational. Born into slavery in 1854, Traylor spent most of his life in the nearly unknown town of Benton, Alabama, just outside of Montgomery. As a self-taught artist, he moved to the state capital in 1935 when he was
2007 marked the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain, an anniversary celebrated with government programs as a great turning point in the history of the nation. Yet across the Atlantic, in the Jamaican parish of St. Elizabeth, a bicentennial of an entirely different kind was commemorated:
Follow @yaleSCIbooks How are you? It’s a question we are constantly asking—on the sidewalk, over the copier, at the dinner table. Almost invariably the answer is noncommittal. “Fine.” “Okay.” “I’m doing well.” What about “happy”? Happiness is hard to talk about—not least because we have so many definitions of what
Every February in the United States is celebrated by honoring the past and current achievements of the African Diaspora and the history of African Americans in the shaping of a nation. Following her New York Times Book of the Year, Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and
Once upon a time, bookstores were made of bricks and mortar, books came from pulverized trees, and this blog post, if it existed, would have appeared in a newsletter delivered to your mailbox. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? The music industry similarly thought along these lines before the term “mp3” entered
Follow @yaleSCIbooks Walk out of your city office building and you might have half a dozen choices of nearby places to eat lunch; choose the sandwich shop across the street and inside, you have to choose from among five fillings, three types of bread, and myriad toppings. You have just
Appreciation for graphic art and visual narrative is prevalent in Japanese pop culture from the fantastical animations of Hayao Miyazaki to page-turning manga comic books and cartoon anime characters appearing on everything from book bags to pencil cases. This love for the illustrated arts is the product of Japan’s rich