Sorry everyone; I had a busy weekend and could not post on Sunday. So here is this post on Monday.

*LAST DAY TO DONATE TO MY ATLANTIC IMPACT FUNDRAISER!!!!!!! Here are my posts from the past few weeks with Barbados Cultural Facts of the Day and other Barbados related posts.

Please donate to my fundraiser for Atlantic Impact’s Abroad for a Cause Challenge in which the organization is inviting two bloggers to travel with them to Barbados this summer. Atlantic Impact is an organization that helps at risk youth by giving them opportunities to travel abroad.

*Lupita Nyong’o has joined the cast of the upcoming Star Wars film, Star Wars: Episode VII. Here is Comic Book Resource‘s list of five comic superheroes that Nyong’o could play.

*Out Magazine’s “Exploring M. Lamar’s ‘Negro Gothic Sensibility:'” “Multimedia artist M. Lamar may have played pre-prison Sophia in OITNB—but he’s more than Laverne Cox’s real-life twin. Much more….Before starting a conversation with musician and multimedia artist M. Lamar there are a few things you should read up on: doom metal, Robert Mapplethorpe, Frantz Fanon, Plato, Leontyne Price, bell hooks’ concept of white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy, James Brown, James Baldwin, counter tenors, Cecil Taylor, the early films of Todd Haynes, Carrie Mae Weems, Kara Walker…”

* Osvaldo Oyola‘s “Black Communities of the 30th Century: Racial Assimilation and Ahistoricity in Superhero Comics” in Apex Magazine: “A past’s vision of the future can teach us something about its present, or, in the case of the “Big Two” superhero comic book publishers, about how it ever was and sometimes seems like it ever will be. Issue #216 of DC comics’ Superboy, Starring the Legion of Superheroes enlightens readers not only on the state of race relations in the idealized 30^th century of its stories, but captures the arc of most black superheroes in the comic book world, whether it be in 1976 (when issue #216 came out), or the 2000s when Luke Cage joined Brian Michael Bendis’s New Avengers.”

*NPR’s “Well, All Right, Starchild, The Mothership Is Back:” Article on Parliament Funkadelic’s Mothership which is now at the Smithsonian.

*”Skylight Gallery presents: Medicine from Heaven: How African American Culture Was Used to Cure the USA | A Juneteenth Jubilee Exhibit by Sol’Sax:” Sol’Sax’s 5th Juneteenth Jubilee Exhibit opens June 19th and runs to August 17th and includes a couple of special programs during its run. Here is a description:

“This Juneteenth we will celebrate the cultural soldiers who shared with us their heavenly blessings that healed so many sick European supremacist beliefs. Inspired by African American iconographic figures like Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Bessie Smith and Robert Johnson (the father of Rock N Roll), among others, Sol’Sax celebrates these African American archetypes as “Soul’Saints.”

*As part of Caribbean Culture Month and Selebrasyon, New York’s Celebration of Haitian Art and Culture, artist Maksaens Denis will perform his experimental work of video, music and dance, Mutation 062, and discuss his career at FiveMyles Gallery on June 20th at 7pm.

*Myrdith Leon Mccormack ‘s “Not Just a Book: “Legacies, a Guide for Young Black Women in Planning Their Future:” “This new knowledge led me to do further researcher and to contact my dear friend Dolly Turner, who gifted me a piece of literature I will cherish and pass onto my children, Legacies, A Guide For Young Black Women Planning Their Future.

The stories in this book are designed to educate and motivate our children of all colors (and even adults) on black heritage, roots and the entire black race.

The book is a combination of stories told by sixteen African Queens and almost forty successful black women. The stories at first seemed almost too fantastic to be true, but the vivid details were so historically sound that there could be no way this was fictional.
A workbook outline is included to help young women develop life skills to help guide them to making decisions that will help them succeed. It serves as a reminder of what great people we are, were and can still be.”

*Here is the website for the book, The Execution of Sun Ra, musicovermind.org. Here is a description of the book:

“The Execution of Sun Ra is a 6 x 9, 262-page paperback with images by Lee Santa, Leon Collins, Michael Wilderman, Paula Stanley and Yusef Jones. The cover illustration was done by Erica Fallin and the book design by Al Morrow. The foreword was written by Greg Tate. John Szwed and Matt Shipp graciously provided back cover blurbs. There are two appendices including the first published transcript of my October 1990 interview with Sun Ra and several transcriptions of material held by the CAA at ESS. There’s also a recommended playlist to enhance your reading pleasure. The book is an interpretative response to Sun Ra’s teachings. He talked all the time and was as amply recorded as any artist of the 20th Century. My book offers a vigorous critical analysis of much of this documentation, and in the process offers its readers a sweeping reimagining of our most ancient beginnings and far flung possibilities as seen in the light of Sun Ra’s Cosmo Myth Science.”

 

*NK Jeminsin’s “Winscon 38 Guest of Honors Speech” in which she talks about the rise of racism in fandoms: “This is why I say I was premature in calling for a reconciliation. Reconciliations are for after the violence has ended. In South Africa the Truth & Reconciliation Commission came after apartheid’s end; in Rwanda it started after the genocide stopped; in Australia reconciliation began after its indigenous people stopped being classified as “fauna” by its government. Reconciliation is a part of the healing process, but how can there be healing when the wounds are still being inflicted? How can we begin to talk about healing when all the perpetrators have to do is toss out dogwhistles and disclaimers of evil intent to pretend they’ve done no harm?”

*Colorlines Interview with THEESatisfaction.

*New Music:

–Georgia Anne Muldrow‘s “Personal”

–Homeboy Sandman with Blu “Atlantis”