The racial imaginary
Subtitle: writers on race in the life of the mind
By: eds. Claudia Rankine, Beth Loffreda, and Max King Cap
Publisher: Fence Books
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 285
ISBN-13: 9781934200797
Copyright date: 2015
Subjects: African Americans in literature; African American authors; Poetics; History and criticism; American literature; Poetry; Identity politics; Race in literature; Race relations in literature; Black authors
Description: "To think of creativity in terms of transcendence is itself specific and partial--a lovely dream perhaps, but an inhuman one. "It is not only white writers who make a prize of transcendence, of course. Many writers of all backgrounds see the imagination as a historical, as a generative place where race doesn't and shouldn't enter, a place of bodies that transcend the legislative, the economic--in other words, transcend the stuff that doesn't lend itself much poetry. In this view the imagination is postracial, a posthistorical and postpolitical utopia. . . . To bring up race for these writers is to inch close to the anxious space of affirmative action, the scarring qualifieds. "So everyone is here."--Claudia Rankine and Beth Loffreda, from the introduction In 2011, a poem published in a national magazine by a popular white male poet made use of a black female body. A conversation ensued, and ended. Claudia Rankine subsequently created Open Letter, a web forum for writers to relate the effects and affects of racial difference and to explore art's failure, thus far, to adequately imagine"--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Pray (detail)  -- Kate Clark -- Introduction / -- Beth Loffreda and Claudia Rankine; title: Floating currency  -- Max King Cap -- from; title: Political theatre  -- Mark Peterson; title: Chinioserie  -- Kyungmi Shin; title: The Wogs  -- (texist); title: This is an imaginary border  -- EJ Hill; title: Institutions.; title: Flibbertigibbet in a white room/Competencies  -- Simone White; title: What do we see? What do we not see?  -- Ari Banias; title: What we could do with writing  -- Casey Llewellyn; title: Race, feminism, and creative spaces  -- Maryam Afaq; title: Statement of purpose  -- Jennifer Chang; title: To whom it may concern  -- Jess Row; title: Open letter  -- Charlie Bernstein; title: Queen  -- Wendy Ewald; title: I am not a man  -- Dread Scott; title: Tony & Everett  -- John Lucas; title: The mask of the shoeshiner  -- Edgar Endress; title: Steve's bris  -- Jay Wolke; title: Mimic  -- Jeff Wall; title: Lives.; title: How do we invent language of racial identity--that is not necessarily constructing the "scene of instruction" about race but create the linguistic material of racial speech/thought?  -- Ronaldo V. Wilson; title: Response to call for writing about writing about race  -- Arielle Greenberg; title: If I tell these stories: notes on racism and the white imaginary  -- Helen Klonaris; title: Open letter  -- Isaac Myers, III; title: Of whiteness, Obama, and the so-called postracial  -- Tess Taylor; title: Introduction  -- Zhou Xiaojing; title: Opposite 3 (Left) ;; title: Opposite 2 (Right)  -- Alice Shaw; title: Fade away  -- Nery Gabriel Lemus; title: San Francisco Historical Monument 1848-2  -- John Jota Leaños -- from; title: Acts of charity  -- Mark Peterson; title: Torah reading-B'nai Zaken Ethiopian concregation -- Jay Wolke; title: Readings.; title: "There are no rats": some figuring on race  -- Joshua Weiner; title: From circumstance to constellation: Richard Pryor, resistance, and the racial imaginary's archive  -- Farid Matuk; title: Open letter  -- A. Van Jordan; title: Open letter  -- Dan Beachy-Quick; title: Signing and resigning  -- James Allen Hall; title: Racing Stein: what is seen and unseen in taking a hero out for a reread  -- Jill Magi; title: Exempt, implicated  -- Rachel Zucker; title: And here he comes smiling intending no harm: a poetics of invisible  -- Francisco Aragón; title: Once upon a time in a land far far away  -- Charles McGill; title: I once knew a Latino  -- Nery Gabriel Lemus; title: Looking for the birds  -- Amitis Motevalli; title: Street photography  -- Edgar Endress; title: Critiques.; title: Open letter 11 March 2011  -- Kasey Johnson; title: Feeling colored  -- Diane Exavier; title: Open letter  -- Beth Loffreda; title: Open letter  -- Soraya Membreno; title: Trespasses  -- Lacy M. Johnson; title: Open letter  -- Evie Shockley; title: 1987 Trabantamino 607 Deluxe  -- Liz Cohen; title: White people are a desalination plant in Puerto Rico  -- William Pope.L; title: The last centerfold  -- Amitis Motevalli; title: Black Power helmet  -- Ian Weaver; title: Lowrider builder and child  -- Liz Cohen; title: Shaman 33  -- Todd Gray; title: Poetics.; title: Love the masters  -- Jericho Brown; title: An abridged version -- Reginald Dwayne Betts; title: Open letter  -- Ira Sadoff; title: Schizophrene: texture notes  -- Bhanu Kapil; title: E-racing lingo ...  -- Tracie Morris; title: A slaty kind of racial(ized) poetics  -- Tamiko Beyer; title: On politics and art, the writer in society  -- Jane Lazarre; title: "Negroes make me hungry"--some notes on race  -- R. Erica Doyle; title: Open letter  -- Sandra Lim; title: Open letter  -- Hossannah Asuncion; title: Race and erasure  -- Caitie Moore; title: Open letter  -- Kristin Palm; title: Open letter  -- Danielle Pafunda; title: Writing about race  -- Bettina Judd; title: Who's watching anymore, anyway?  -- Dawn Lundy Martin; title: Tomoko as octopus -- Jeremiah Barber.