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<title>Now - Recent Posts By Black Bloggers - Category: Writing</title>
<description>The Source For Aggregated African American Blog Feeds</description>
<link>http://www.Afronary.Net/feed/Writing</link>
<copyright>2009</copyright>
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        <title>Afronary.Net</title>
        <description><![CDATA[  Afronary.Net is tracking a total of 130 Black Blogs.  There have been 8 total posts today.<br>
		There are 1 blogs in the category Writing.  There have been 0 posts in this category today.<br>The blogs are organized into 42 categories.  <a href="http://www.afronary.net/">Click here to view all the categories we track</a><br>]]></description>
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        <pubDate> Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:50:15 -0700</pubDate>
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        <title><![CDATA[These "Soldiers", They Force us to Rape Them]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose At its core, a culture that breeds hatred against women, not only believes that every rape victim “had it coming,” but it indoctrinates its citizens, and socializes them to accept that sexual violence against women is somehow a “necessary evil.”&nbsp;&nbsp;

The title of this post is quite literally based on a 2006 article in the&nbsp;Journal of South African Studies.&nbsp; This article exposed post-apartheid sexual assault against women in South Africa.&nbsp; I thought of it when I was listening to my favorite morning radio show The Takeaway.&nbsp; One of this week’s “takeaways” was the prevalence and persistence of sexual assault against women in the military.&nbsp; As I was listening, the old, yet familiar tropes of patriarchy kept playing again and again.&nbsp;

Representative Loretta Sanchez, the highest ranking woman in the House Armed Services Committee, provided information about the testimonies brought forth to congress this week.&nbsp; I was awestruck by the fol]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[What is Love?]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose image vanessapikerussell.com
On this day that we set aside to celebrate love, I wonder if we really think about love and what it means, or do we all get caught up in gifting and the politics therein...

We feel, see, and show love in so many ways, yet the one day we set aside to celebrate this omnipresent, universal concept, we transform it into a kind of homage to diamonds, roses, and chocolate. &nbsp;Although we all appreciate those things, and they are beautiful signifiers of romantic love, is romantic love the truest and ultimate expression of love? The love between lovers is powerful and breathtaking, yet it is only Act One of a Five-Act play. &nbsp;Unfortunately, many of us never stick around for the rest of the show. &nbsp;If not ephemeral in the first place, the burn of romance endures. &nbsp;What drives the burn is something which surpasses a lover's kiss. 


Love is that aching, beautiful, extraordinary effusiveness that God/Allah/Jehovah/Yahweh (and the other hundred names]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[Do We Still Need Black History Month?]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose Unfortunately, we do still need Black History Month. &nbsp;I say "unfortunately" because many African Americans find it unfortunate that an entire corpus of literary excellence and a long history of scientific contributions, dating back to the turn of the late nineteenth century, have been reduced to a 28-day public service announcement.

I say "still" because the intent of the original "Black History Week" was to generate discourse about and compensate for the larger society's neglect of African American contributions. &nbsp;Since American History and Social Studies texts had omitted African American stories from school curricula, "Black History Week" would pay tribute to those neglected Americans. &nbsp;That was 1926. &nbsp;Now, 84 years later, aside from a sprinkling of color, relegated to the margins of texts, African American history is "still" largely trivialized and marginalized. &nbsp;Just as the Civil Rights movement has been reduced to The March on Washington and the Montgo]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[He Forgot the President was Black]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose President Obama's State of the Union Address on Wednesday, January 27th was nothing short of rhetorical genius. &nbsp;When President Obama speaks, he has the ear of the entire global community.

Chris Matthews of NBC News shared his thoughts with the world via live commentary immediately following the Address. &nbsp;What he said has sparked a bit of controversy:
"I was trying to think about who he was tonight. It's interesting: he is post-racial, by all appearances. I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. You know, he's gone a long way to become a leader of this country, and passed so much history, in just a year or two. I mean, it's something we don't even think about. I was watching, I said, wait a minute, he's an African-American guy in front of a bunch of other white people. And here he is president of the United States and we've completely forgotten that tonight&nbsp;— completely forgotten it. I think it was in the scope of his discussion. It was so broad-ranging, so in tune]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[Letter to Obama, My President]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose President Obama took the inaugural oath one year ago today. &nbsp;Those who supported him worldwide felt so much awe, triumph, and hope one year ago, yet today many are disillusioned, worried, and impatient. If the 10% national unemployment rate isn't disheartening enough, the latest million dollar bonuses in the banking industry, the stalled health care bill, and the election of a Republican to fill the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat are enough to dash the last vestiges of hope any of us may have had for real&nbsp;change.

Here I sit, melancholy and subdued. &nbsp; If I could write a letter to my president, Barack Obama, it would go something like this:



Mr President:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet do]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[Yèle Haiti]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose As we are all well aware by now, Tuesday evening, January 12, 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated Haiti, leaving the country in ruins with an unquantifiable death toll of possibly more than 50,000. 

My heart is so full... I weep for Haiti almost daily....

When I awoke to the horrific news on Wednesday morning, I immediately thought of my Haitian friend and colleague, Brenda. &nbsp;I picked up the phone to call her, but as I was listening to the reports on public radio, I began to weep again. &nbsp;The journalists were trying to reconnect an aid worker in Haiti and his girlfriend here in the U.S. &nbsp;Apparently the two lost communication during the quake. &nbsp;Through her relief to find her boyfriend alive, the young woman discovered that her youngest relative, a 15-month old niece, had been killed in the disaster. &nbsp;At this moment, I crumbled into sobs, unable to finish my phone call... &nbsp;I pictured my 15-month old, chubby baby terrified and dying in my arms. &nbs]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[Anti-Socially Social]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose We have traded land lines for cell phones. &nbsp;We would rather send text messages on those phones than talk on them. We can't remember how to address an envelope or how much a stamp costs because we send email every 1.5 seconds (I don't know - I made that up). &nbsp;We send e-cards and evites for everything except weddings. &nbsp;This short list of the technological advances negates physical or audible contact with another warm-blooded human. &nbsp;Is the cost of our technological age so high that we have been left socially bankrupt?


People that were born before 1968 usually bring some perspective to our post-millennium dependence on technology and all of its devices. &nbsp;During the holidays, my mother and my husband's grandmother were both rather appalled by their grandchildren's and great grandchildren's preoccupation with ipods, laptops, PSPs, Nintendo DSi, cell phones, etc., etc. &nbsp;I, however, was born after 1968, and I have been a part of the rise of Microsoft and MacInt]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[Black, African American, or Negro]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose The United States Census has always been mired in controversy, particularly with regard to race. We shouldn't, however, be surprised by this fact, as America's history is irrevocably bound to the legacy of slavery.  Yes, I said it, SLAVERY.  Since there is a "national amnesia", as Toni Morrison contends, about slavery, Americans are always shocked, disappointed, and or incredulous when issues of race, racism, white supremacy, or racial marginalization rears their ugly heads.


So here we are again.  Question #9 of the 2010 Census asks the interviewee to select his/her race.  The box allocated for persons of

African decent reads:  "Black, African American,  or Negro".   As a caveat, there is a box at the end of the listed racial categories in which the interviewee can write in "Some other race".  Hmmm....I'm going to offend my Black, African American, or Negro" brethren and sisteren (yes i know i just made that up), because I do not see this category as an affront to my blackness and/o]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[New Year!  New Decade!]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose Happy New Year all!  


I finally decided to join the world of blogging.  I suppose I took so long to join the ranks of the cyber writers, ranters, and confessionals because I didn't want to be in their ranks.  I am determined to shape this blog so that it is less narcissistic, less diaryish and more about poesy and prose as its title claims.  Although I don't really engage in the proverbial "New Year's resolution", I do vow each year to be better, live better, do more, learn more than I did the year before. So in that vain, I have decided to "be the change I wish to see" in all aspects of my world.  Since I have included this blog in my world, it will be a source of enlightenment and inspiration to my students, friends, and family. 


I look forward to a happy and prosperous New Year.


¡Salud!]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[Words Are Our Friends....(Really)]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose Each year that I teach Freshman English, I notice that my students have fewer and fewer words in their vocabulary stockpile. &nbsp;Not only are they acquainted with fewer words, but they are indifferent to, and intimidated by the use of multi-syllable, "big words."

It's not that they had not been exposed to age appropriate vocabulary as they approached the end of their high school careers. &nbsp;They were simply not encouraged to use that vocabulary as tools with which to communicate and evolve. &nbsp;Many of my students have fallen victim to rote memorization of the old "spelling list". &nbsp;Then, five minutes after the Friday spelling test, the words fell from their memories like so many items on a grocery list. &nbsp;If high school teachers are encouraging students to use advanced vocabulary in their written and spoken discourse, the students never take them seriously. &nbsp;Instead, they recede back into the 6th grade vocabulary of their texting and Facebook world.

When they bec]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:59:59 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[Poesy and Prose]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose ]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:59:59 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[Anna Julia Cooper, the Mother of Black Intellectualism]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose Besides having been the 4th African American woman to receive her Ph.D. in 1925 from the University of Paris Sorbonne, one could also consider Anna Julia Cooper the "ghost" writer and thinker for W.E.B. Dubois.

 
In honor of Women's History Month, I wanted to illuminate Anna Julia Cooper, a seldom discussed and seldom lauded scholar, intellectual, and feminist. &nbsp;Most are unaware of the friendship between Cooper and the famous intellectual W.E.B. DuBois. &nbsp;As many may know, the turn of the twentieth century signified a rise in Black thought, culture, and community. &nbsp;Black intellectuals sought to&nbsp;disrupt the prevailing white supremacist notions of race and challenge intellectual spaces not meant for blacks.

 
As a result of this deconstruction, the inevitable gender battle erupted within the Black community. &nbsp;Cooper argued that black men had selfishly excluded black women from higher education and intellectual progress.

 
Heretofore, the black woman had been pu]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:59:59 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[What Next?  Will Students Just Watch Podcasts of Computer Animated Instructors?]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose In a&nbsp;New York Times Article&nbsp;this week, a professor at the University of Houston explains that she has been outsourcing the grading of student papers to a company who employs graders in India, Singapore,and Malaysia!
Yes, all writing teachers and academics dread the arduous and, at times, oppressive task of grading twenty or more freshman comp. papers every week. &nbsp;We joke about it daily. &nbsp;As I type this, thousands of academics on college campuses around the nation sit, slumped over, head in hand, tethered with "ball and chain"to the sea of composition papers they never seem to finish grading. &nbsp;However, we persevere and grade those papers because we agree upon certain truths about writing and teaching writing. 

All teachers of writing know that a person's writing is like a person's fingerprint. &nbsp;Narrative voice and style are idiosyncratic to each writer. &nbsp;Many beginning writers are just beginning to develop a narrative style when they enter college. &n]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:59:59 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[Demystifying Locked Hair]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose I don't often blog about myself, but then again, the phenomenon of locked hair (or the pop culture reference - "dreadlocked" hair) is not about me. &nbsp;Indeed, the phenomenon started long before me and is really not about hair at all. &nbsp;The locking of one's hair amounts to identity.

Even if those who identify locks with the hip hop culture decide to lock their hair in order to represent hip hop culture, locking, in that sense, represents a group affiliation to hip hop. 

Here, however, I wish to discuss a different kind of identity politics. &nbsp;And for me, this type of signifying tends to carry a more radical, counter culture frame of reference.

I decided to blog about this because students ask me weekly, if not daily, why I decided to lock my hair.
I never give them the long version of the story, the version I am going to provide here. &nbsp;In fact, I decided to lock my hair at least 10 years before I actually began the process. &nbsp;I remember reading an excerpt from a l]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:59:59 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[On Motherhood]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose This Mother's Day, perhaps more than any other Mother's Day up until now, I feel so fortunate to have my own mother, healthy, happy, and whole. &nbsp;As I ponder our relationship and how close we are, I ponder too the gift of motherhood.

Women find a more profound appreciation for their mothers and motherhood in general when they become mothers themselves. &nbsp;Of course, there are always debates about this (and I won't debate the issue here), but only women who have chosen motherhood know the real answer. 

As I watch my sons grow into fine young men and my baby son grow into a precocious toddler, I sit in awe of how miraculous they all are, and that the miracle began right inside my own body. &nbsp;I vividly remember all three pregnancies, and I am incredulous when I hear mothers say, "Oh, you don't remember the pain of labor and deliver." &nbsp;Yet, I do remember all three, death defying labor and deliveries. &nbsp;But, I guess too, the pain has made me cherish the lives it yielde]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:59:59 -0700]]></pubDate>

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        <title><![CDATA[Fear of a Brown Planet]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[From: Poesy and Prose I am deeply wounded by the recent "outlawing" of the teaching of Ethnic Studies in Arizona high schools. &nbsp;I have spent the better part of my life looking for myself in the literature that I have loved so much. &nbsp;As a girl, I reveled in American classics like Little Women. &nbsp;However, I quickly became hungry for narratives whose protagonists looked like me. &nbsp;It wasn't until high school when my English teacher (my white English teacher) included in our list of readings Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Maya Angelou's &nbsp;I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings that my hunger was satiated. &nbsp;But of course, literary people's hunger for literature is never satiated. &nbsp;Hence, my current Ph.D. pursuit, my M.A. in African American Literature, and my B.A. in English. 


Is it slippery slope thinking to believe that this law is just the beginning of academic censoring, or does this law set the precedent for what is to come nationwide in high schools and soon in universities?]]></description>
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        <pubDate> <![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:59:59 -0700]]></pubDate>

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