Best African American Essays: Friends, Family “Fired: Can ...

Best African American Essays:

Friends, Family

"Fired: Can a Friendship Really End For No Good Reason?" By Emily Bernard emily.bernard@uvm.edu

Emily Bernard is Associate Professor of English and ALANA U. S. Ethnic Studies at the University of Vermont. She received both her B. A. and her Ph. D. from the American Studies Department at Yale University. She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and AfricanAmerican Research at Harvard University, and the Ford Foundation. Her personal essays have also appeared in Best American Essays and Best of Creative Non-Fiction. Her books include: Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten (2001), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and Some of My Best Friends: Writers on Interracial Friendship (2004), which was chosen by the New York Public Library for its Book for the Teen Age 2006 list. During the 2008-09 academic year, Professor Bernard is the James Weldon Johnson Fellow in African American Studies at the Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscript Library at Yale University. Her upcoming book, White Shadows: Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance, will be published by Yale University Press in 2009.

Gray Shawl By Walter Mosley assistant@

Walter Mosley is one of the most versatile and admired writers in America today. He is the author of more than 29 critically acclaimed books, including the major bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins. His work has been translated into 21 languages and includes literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times magazine and the Nation, among other publications. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy and PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City.

Real Food By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie nwylie@

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Enugu, Nigeria, the fifth of six children to Igbo parents. Chimamanda completed her secondary education at the University of Nigeria's school, receiving several academic prizes. She went on to study medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and a half. During this period, she edited The Compass, a magazine run by the University's Catholic medical students. She gained a scholarship to study communication at Drexel University in Philadelphia for two years, and she went on to pursue a degree in communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University. At the moment, Chimamanda divides her time between Nigeria and the United States. She was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University during the 2005-2006 academic year, and is now pursuing graduate work in the African Studies program at Yale University.

Entertainment, Sports, the Arts

Hip Hop Planet By James McBride jamesmcbride@

James McBride is an award-winning writer and musician. He has been a staff writer for The Washington Post/, /People/ magazine, and /The Boston Globe/. His memoir and tribute to his mother, /The Color of Water/, spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list, was published worldwide, and was the winner of the prestigious Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His novel "Miracle At St. Anna," is a major motion picture directed by American film icon Spike Lee. James also wrote the script for the $45 million film. As a composer, he won the American Music Theater Festival's Stephen Sondheim Award for his jazz/pop musical Bobos, and has composed songs for Anita Baker, Grover Washington, Jr., and Gary Burton. As a saxophonist, he has performed with Rachelle Farrell and with legendary jazz performer Little Jimmy Scott.

Writers Like Me By Martha Southgate msouthgate@

Martha Southgate is the author of Third Girl from the Left/ which was published in paperback by Houghton Mifflin in September 2006. It won the Best Novel of the year award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her previous novel, The Fall of Rome, received the 2003 Alex Award from the American Library Association and was named one of the best novels of 2002 by Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post. She is also the author of Another Way to Dance, which won the Coretta Scott King Genesis Award for Best First Novel. She received a 2002 New York Foundation for the Arts grant and has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Her non-fiction articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, O, Premiere and Essence. She now

teaches in the Brooklyn College MFA program. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two children.

Dances with Daffodils By Jamaica Kincaid jkincaid@fas.harvard.edu

Jamaica Kincaid's twisted quest for self began with her May 25, 1949 birth in Antigua. She was then christened Elaine Potter Richardson, but when she fled the island at the age of seventeen, she left her family as well as her name behind and entered North America as Jamaica Kincaid. Her life should seem familiar to those who know her heavily autobiographical work. She worked first in New York City as an au pair, for an upper class family much like the one pictured in Lucy. She left this work to study photography at the New School for Social Research and then went on to Franconia College in New Hampshire (but did not take a degree) before returning to New York. There she became a regular contributor to the New Yorker magazine, writing for nearly twenty years (1976-1995) before the arrival of new management convinced her to leave. She now resides in Vermont.

The Coincidental Cousins: A night out with artist Kara Walker By James Hannaham jhannaha@pratt.edu

James Hannaham was born in the Bronx and raised in Yonkers, NY. He has a BA from Yale and an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas. He has written criticism for The Village Voice, Us Magazine, Spin, and Out, among others. A professor of creative writing at the Pratt Institute, his first novel, God Says No, will be published by McSweeney's Books in 2009.

Music: Bodies in Pain By Mark Anthony Neal Man9@duke.edu

MARK ANTHONY NEAL is the author of four books, What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (1998), Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic (2002), Songs in the Keys of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation (2003) and New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity (2005). Neal is also the co-editor (with Murray Forman) of That's the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (2004). Neal is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke University. A frequent commentator for National Public Radio's News and Notes with Farai Chideya Neal also contributes to

several on-line media outlets, including . Neal's blog "Critical Noir" appears at . In the Fall of 2008, Neal will be a Visiting Scholar in the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania.

When Tyra met Naomi: Race, Fashion, and Rivalry By Hawa Allan hawa.allan@

Hawa Allan is a graduate of The University of Chicago and Columbia Law School. Her work has appeared in The New York Quarterly and Trace Magazine. She lives in New York City, where she practices law, and is currently at work on a book of short stories and a novel.

Dance in the Dark By Gerald Early

Modern-Day Mammy? By Jill Nelson jillspeaks4u@

Jill Nelson has been a working journalist for over twenty years. She is a graduate of the City College of New York and Columbia University's School of Journalism. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Essence, The Washington Post, The Nation, Ms., The Chicago Tribune and the Village Voice. Jill was a staff writer for the Washington Post Magazine during its first years of existence, and was named Washington D.C. Journalist of the Year for her work there. Author of the bestselling memoir, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience. In addition to writing, Jill worked as a professor of Journalism at the City College of New York from 1998 to 2003.

Broken Dreams By Michael A. Gonzales

Harlem native Michael A. Gonzales is co-author of the groundbreaking music book Bring the Noise: A Guide to Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture (Random House, 1991). He has written cover stories for Vibe, Stop Smiling, XXL, The Source and Essence. Gonzales has penned articles and essays for The Vibe History of HipHop (Random House), Vibe HipHop Divas (Random House), Latina, Best Sex Writing 2005 (Cleis Press), Spin, Beats, Rhymes & Life (Harlem Moon) and The Village Voice. In addition, his short fiction has appeared in Trace, Colorlines, OneWorld, Proverbs for the People (Kensington), NY Press, Bronx Biannual (Akashic Books), Nat , Darker Mask: Heroes from the Shadows (Tor Books), Brown Sugar 2: Great One Night Stands (Simon & Shuster) and the

UK anthology Tell Tales IV (Peepal Tree Press Ltd). Gonzales also writes for the blogs Riffs & and . Currently he lives in Brooklyn.

Sciences, Technology, Education

What IQ Doesn't Tell You about Race By Malcolm Gladwell gladwellmalcolm@

Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer with The New Yorker magazine since 1996. His 1999 profile of Ron Popeil won a National Magazine Award, and in 2005 he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. He is the author of two books, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference," (2000) and "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" (2005), both of which were number one New York Times bestsellers. From 1987 to 1996, he was a reporter with the Washington Post, where he covered business, science, and then served as the newspaper's New York City bureau chief. He graduated from the University of Toronto, Trinity College, with a degree in history. He was born in England, grew up in rural Ontario, and now lives in New York City.

Driving By Kenneth A. McClane kam6@cornell.edu

Kenneth McClane is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Literature at Cornell University. The author of seven poetry collections, including Take Five: Collected Poems, 1971-1986, he has also published a volume of personal essays, Walls: Essays 1985-1990. A new essay collection, Color: Essays on Race, Family, and History, will appear in 2009.

Part I. I Had a Dream By Bill Maxwell bmaxwell@

A native of Fort Lauderdale, Maxwell was reared in a migrant farming family. After a short time in college and the U.S. Marine Corps, he returned to school. During his college years, he worked as an urban organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and wrote for several civil rights publications. He first began teaching college English in 1973 at Kennedy-King College in Chicago and continued to teach for 18 years. Before joining the Times, Maxwell spent six years writing a weekly column for the Gainesville Sun and the New York Times syndicate. Before that, Maxwell was an investigative reporter for the Fort Pierce Tribune in Fort Pierce, where he focused on labor and migrant farm worker affairs.

Part II. A Dream Lay Dying By Bill Maxwell

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