The Routledge Reader of African American Rhetoric: The Longue Durée of Black Voices

The Routledge Reader of African American Rhetoric is a comprehensive compendium of primary texts that is designed for use by students, teachers, and scholars of rhetoric and for the general public interested in the history of African American communication. The volume and its companion website include dialogues, creative works, essays, folklore, music, interviews, news stories, raps, videos, and speeches that are performed or written by African Americans. Both the book as a whole and the various selections in it speak directly to the artistic, cultural, economic, gendered, social, and political condition of African Americans from the enslavement period in America to the present, as well as to the Black Diaspora. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents About the Section Editors List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Part I African American Rhetoric—Definitions and Understanding Introduction: African American Rhetoric: What It Be, What It Do 1 African American Rhetorical Theory Markings of an African Concept of Rhetoric Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America Introduction: Aspects of African American Rhetoric as a Field Further Reading Discussion Questions Part II The Blackest Hours—Origins and Histories of African American Rhetoric Introduction: “Coming Out of the Dark”: The Beginnings of African American Rhetoric 2 Nobody Knows Our Name: African Orature in the American Diaspora The Epic of Old Mali Eshu of the Yoruba Roots The Creation Why Negroes Are Black and Ole Massa and John Who Wanted to Go to Heaven The Dozens: A History of Rap’s Mama Stackolee Mama Sez The Rise of Black Appeal Radio Further Reading Discussion Questions 3 Religion and Spirituality/Transportations and Transformations of Spirituality and Identity in the New World The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African Article I. Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Slavery “Oh Ye Americans”: The Autobiography of Omar ibn Said The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen. To Which Is Annexed the Rise and Progress of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Containing a Narrative of the Yellow Fever in the Year of Our Lord 1793: With an Address to the People of Colour in the United States Her Brothers and Sisters A Prayer Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey Open Letter to the Born Again God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks About Life on Sapelo Island The Third Revolution: A New Spirituality Arises A Mother’s Prayer for Her Unborn Child Transcript of Rev. Lowery’s Inaugural Benediction Further Reading Discussion Questions 4 Language, Literacy, and Education Article II. Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Ignorance Chapter X The Struggle for an Education The Talented Tenth How It Feels to Be Colored Me Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan Conclusion Reading the World of School Literacy: Contextualizing the Experience of a Young African American Male Freedom for Literacy and Literacy for Freedom: The African-American Philosophy of Education Further Reading Discussion Questions 5 Black Presence: African American Political Rhetoric A Letter to Thomas Jefferson “Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country” or “If I Had a Country, I Should Be a Patriot” Preface The Awakening of the Afro-American Woman Mob Murder in a Christian Nation “The Time Is Now” Statement to the Judiciary Committee Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex Address to Congress Over Hip-Hop Lyrics The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action (Excerpt) Speaking in Tongues Address on the 50th Anniversary of the Selma, Alabama March Further Reading Discussion Questions Part III Discourses on Black Bodies Introduction: Genders and Sexualities 6 Race Women and Black Feminisms Why Sit Ye Here and Die? The Trials of Girlhood Southern Horrors In Union There Is Strength We Seek Full Equality for Women “Bigger Than a Hamburger” Testimony Before the Credentials Committee, Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 22, 1964 For the Equal Rights Amendment (10 August 1970), Washington D.C., Congress “Welfare Is a Women’s Issue” The Combahee River Collective Statement “Ain’t She Still a Woman?” Conversation With Professor Imani Perry “The Role of Allies in 2013” National Book Awards Acceptance Speech, November 16, 2011, New York Further Reading Discussion Questions 7 Motions of Manhood A Memorial to the South Carolina Senate Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself A Man Without a Name Jefferson Davis as a Representative of Civilization The Doll Passing A Raisin in the Sun, Act III Sula Black Macho and the Myth of the Super Woman On Malcolm X Dreams From My Father, Chapter Four Scenes of Instruction, Section II: Are You Man Enough? Perfect Peace Straight Black Queer: Obama, Code-Switching, and the Gender Anxiety of African American Men Black Dads Are Doing Best of All Further Reading Discussion Questions 8 The Quare of Queer The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African The Fugitive Slave Law Black Bourgeoisie Soul on Ice On the Women’s and Gay Liberation Movements Why I Write Can the Queen Speak?: Racial Essentialism, Sexuality and the Problem of Authority “Quare” Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know About Queer Studies I Learned From My Grandmother Love Conjure/Blues The Black Dick as a Weapon of Mass Destruction: George Bush, Oprah Winfrey, “Down Low,” and the Politics of HIV Blame Hip-Hop Honeys and Da Hustlaz: Black Sexualities in the New Hip-Hop Pornography Open Letter Further Reading Discussion Questions Part IV The New Blackness: Multiple Cultures, Multiple Modes Introductions: Courageous Rhetoric: Caribbean Foundations, New Media, and Black Aesthetics Everyday Rhetoric: Rhetoric Everyday 9 Caribbean Thought and Its Critique of Subjugation Liberty or Death: Proclamation Sell Out Puerto Rican Nationalism An End to the Neglect of the Problems of Negro Women! Discourse on Colonialism Black Power—Its Relevance to the West Indies In Nobody’s Backyard The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action Articulating a Caribbean Aesthetic: The Revolution of Self-Perception The Honourable Member The Odd and the Ordinary: Haiti, the Caribbean, and the World We Are Ugly, But We Are Here Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument Further Reading Discussion Questions 10 Black Technocultural Expressivity Technology and Ethos Black Visual Intonation Microphones in the Riot Zones eBlack: A 21st Century Challenge The Race for Cyberspace: Information Technology in the Black Diaspora Introduction to “Future Texts” Integrating the Histories of Race and Technology “Your Own White Privilege”: The Ethics of Play Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud: African Americans, American Artifactual Culture, and Black Vernacular Technological Creativity Public Discourse, Community Concerns, and Civic Engagement: Exploring Black Social Networking Traditions on BlackPlanet.com Fade: Notes Toward an African American Rhetoric 2.0 Further Reading Discussion Questions 11 Beat Rebels Corrupting Youth Against Babylon Afrika Bambaataa & the Mighty Zulu Nation Hip Hop 101 Hybridity, Rap, and Pedagogy for the 1990s: A Black Studies Sounding of Form Crimes of Style: Aesthetics of Authority “Waack and Breakin’,” “Rap Dancing,” and “What Hip Hop Dance Says” We Real Cool?: On Hip-Hop, Asian-Americans, Black Folks, and Appropriation Palestinian and Palestinian American Hip Hop B-Boys in “Les Banlieues”: Hip Hop Culture in France “Rap COINTELPRO Part V . . . The NYPD Zeros in on Hip-Hop” Poetry in Motion: Mind = Body = Soul Homohop’s Role Within Hip-Hop: Juba Kalamka Interview BITCH: The Death of Wifeable Women and a Queer Intervention Orals . . . Head . . . Genius: The Power, Knowledge, and Pleasure of Hard Core The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop Power Moves Hip Hop as Contemporary Ontology of Blackness “Hip-Hop / Rap” Further Reading Discussion Questions 12 Black Arts: Black Argument To S. M. a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works Excerpt from the preface of Our Nig The National Emancipation Exposition Harriet Powers Pictorial Quilt Introduction to Blues People The Theater of Reality The Black Aesthetic Report From Part One: An Autobiography Nobel Lecture The 1970s: Is There a Woman’s Art? New Black Math Further Reading Discussion Questions Index