Koritha Mitchell

James Baldwin, Performance Theorist, Sings the Blues for Mister Charlie

James Baldwin worked tirelessly to expose the myths that allowed Americans to delude themselves. Scholars have long recognized this as the driving force of his fiction and nonfiction, but this mission was also very much linked to Baldwin’s conception of theater. This essay culls Baldwin’s theater theory from his nonfiction, especially his seldom-discussed The Devil Finds Work (1976). Baldwin believed that theater could “re-create” people by helping us rediscover our human connection, and he believed that stage actors could show the way. Baldwin’s respect for stage actors develops over time, however. He reaches his conclusions only after realizing—in hindsight—how profoundly the stage had figured in his major life decisions. After identifying Baldwin’s theater theory, the essay uses it to examine his controversial play Blues for Mister Charlie and finds that his goals resonated with what Sharon Holland would later call “raising the dead.”

No More Shame! Defeating the New Jim Crow with Antilynching Activism's Best Tools

This essay identifies similarities between racial violence of an earlier time period, lynching, and its most efficient form today, mass incarceration, suggesting that today’s racial violence must be met with tools used by previous generations. It calls for a critical demeanor of shamelessness that allows targeted communities and their allies to avoid taking on the shame that mainstream discourse encourages them to accept. People of color are incarcerated in staggering numbers, but not because they are disproportionately guilty of violent or even nonviolent crimes. Given the extreme racial disparities, being caught by the nation’s criminal (in)justice system is simply not a reflection on one’s character, not a reason for shame. Americans of all backgrounds must educate and empower themselves to see that mass incarceration is fueling an empire whose greed knows no limits, as it insists on practices that allow the elite to make pawns of everyone else.

Sisters in Motherhood(?): The Politics of Race and Gender in Lynching Drama

The founding of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL) was hailed as one of the most significant contributions to antilynching activism. Newspapers across the country commended the group’s courage and grace,1 and Black women (such as activist Nannie Burroughs) were pleased to see white women accept responsibility for changing public sentiment on mob violence. When considering the organization’s November 1930 Resolution, it is no wonder that Burroughs later referred to the ASWPL as “the most effective organization now working.…”2 ASWPL members declared, “Distressed by the recent upsurge of [sic] lynchings, and noting that people still condone such crimes on the grounds that they are necessary to the protection of womanhood, we, a group of white women representing eight southern states, desire publicly to repudiate and condemn such defense of lynching, and to put ourselves definitely on record as opposed to this crime in every form and under all circumstances.” They continue, “We are profoundly convinced that lynching is not a defense of womanhood or of anything else, but rather a menace to private and public safety.…”3 Indeed, founder Jessie Daniel Ames reported, “convinced by the consideration of the facts,” these women resolved “no longer to remain silent” as the crime of lynching was “done in their name.”4

Dilemmas of the Black Intellectual: A Round Table of the 2009 C ALLALOO C ONFERENCE

DAGMAWI WOUBSHET: Dr. Rowell pointed out at the Callaloo RetReats—in New Orleans in 2008 and in St. Louis in 2009—that their purpose was to create a forum for creative writers and scholars to engage one another meaningfully, bridge the gap between the creative and critical side of our labors. Perhaps we can begin our conversation by reflecting on our retreat experiences, if indeed the retreat has created a new platform for us.

Plays in American Periodicals, 1890-1918 (review)

material spaces” (7, 26). When we think about reprinting in periodicals, then, we need to think not only about what was reprinted in its entirety but also how specific excerpts worked to emphasize particular arguments. Overall, Stadler’s book is an important contribution not only to cultural studies of authorship and genius but also to periodical studies. Although he does not specifically devote any of his chapters to periodicals, he repeatedly shows the extent to which the circulation and reception of periodicals were crucial to the construction of genius at this time. Equally important, he shows how periodical studies can intersect with and be enhanced by recent work in cultural studies, especially queer theory and studies of whiteness. If genius in one of its meanings refers to the ability to represent a place—the genius loci—then the genius of Troubling Minds lies in its ability to offer us an important new site from which to launch a new generation of periodical studies.