A REVOLUTIONARY SUMMER

The Media List

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Tayari Jones

"My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist. He was already married ten years when he first clamped eyes on my mother." -from Silver Sparrow

Suzan Lori Parks

"You're only yourself when no one's watching,"

Nayyirah Waheed

"If someone does not want me it is not the end of the world, but if I do not want me then world is nothing but endings."

Mary J. Blige

"Some try to play me
But they can't fade me..." -from You Bring Me Joy

Kasi Lemmons

"Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others imprinted indelibly on the brain. The summer I killed my father I was 10 years old. My brother Poe was 9, and my sister Cisely has just turned 14." -from Eve's Bayou

Dorothy West

"She turned and went blindly up the stairs. Drooping in the front doorway was a frost-nipped bunch of white flowers. She dragged herself up to her flat. Once she stopped to hide the package under her coat. She would never look at that little white dress again." -from Jack in the Pot

Septima Poinsette Clark

"My husband had strong feelings against women and he did not think that women had the right to do anything worthwhile. As we grew up together he never, never believed that there were women who could do things. He always felt that a woman should stay in her place, in the house. I couldn't see that women should be just in the house making children, keeping house, or buying groceries. So we could not agree." -from I Dream a World

Lina Viktor

"write in code.
speak in tongues.
we have yet to begin."

Andria Nacina Cole

"He told me he was married right off, because he a wide-open liar—the sort that tell you everything but nothing at all. I said what you telling me for? He said that don’t bother you none? I said it don’t bother you? He said, now and again. Now and again it do." -from On the Blood

SZA

"Done with these niggas. I don't love these niggas.
I dust off these niggas. Do it for fun."

Carrie Mae Weems

"How you get work done is by exploiting yourself and your feelings, and sometimes people get in the way."

Amy Sherald

"Art was not a thing for my family and is still not a thing for my family. My family will not go to a museum unless I say we have to go there. That's why I really feel like it was something I was supposed to do because there was no directive that pushed me in that direction."

Valerie Maynard

"Human-beingness is who I am. I don't think of myself as an artist."

Solange Knowles

"You got the right to be mad, but when you carry it alone, you find it only getting in the way."

Julie Dash

"Whenever I do a film, it has to take us one step further to making the world safe for everyone."

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2018 Selections

Fiction

An American Marriage

Tayari Jones

"On the Blood"

Andria Nacina Cole

"Jack in the Pot"

Dorothy West

Non-Fiction

I Dream A World: Portraits of Black

Women Who Changed America

Brian Lanker

Poetry

Salt

Nayyirah Waheed

Drama

In the Blood

Suzan Lori-Parks

Film

Eve's Bayou

Kasi Lemmons

Daughters of the Dust

Julie Dash

Album

My Life

Mary J. Blige

Ctrl

SZA

A Seat at the Table

Solange

Visual Art

Now and Forever More

Royal

Lina Viktor

The Kitchen Table Series

Carrie Mae Weems

Saint Woman

Grand Dame Queenie

Michelle Obama Portrait

Amy Sherald

What Can I Do About All This Injustice?

Artist Trying to Get it All Down

Fulani Lady

Valerie Maynard

Julie Dash

"Whenever I do a film, it has to take us one step further to making the world safe for everyone."