Netflix’s new A Different World sequel brings the beloved fictional HBCU back to television on September 24, 2026, introducing a new generation of Hillman students while bringing several of the original cast members back to the campus that made them television icons. At the center of the new story is Deborah Wayne, the daughter of Dwayne Wayne and Whitley Gilbert, who arrives at Hillman ready to create her own legacy.

When A Different World premiered in 1987, it offered television audiences something relatively rare: a sustained fictional representation of Black college life centered on an HBCU. Hillman College became more than a sitcom setting. It became a cultural space where Black students could wrestle with questions of identity, education, race, class, relationships, gender, politics, sexuality, and adulthood.

Nearly four decades later, Netflix’s return to Hillman presents an intriguing cultural question: What does A Different World look like in an era when college students experience their lives both on campus and online? The answer has the potential to fully transform this series reboot.

The original A Different World existed before social media. There were no Instagram posts documenting campus life, no TikTok videos of viral moments, no X conversations unfolding in real time, no Snapchat stories disappearing after twenty-four hours, and no smartphones capable of recording virtually every moment. Today’s Hillman students live in a dramatically different media environment. As a result, the reboot has the opportunity to explore not only how Black college life has changed, but how social media has changed the way young people construct and communicate Black identity, Black womanhood, friendship, activism, relationships, and HBCU culture.

Hillman College as a Cultural Home

For many viewers, Hillman College represented an imagined HBCU experience — a place where Black intellectual life, cultural identity, friendship, and community existed at the center rather than at the margins.

The original series presented the HBCU college experience as a transformative space. Students arrived with identities shaped by their families and communities, but Hillman challenged them to reconsider who they were and who they wanted to become.

Historically, HBCUs have provided safe spaces where Black students could pursue education while engaging with Black history, culture, leadership, and community. A Different World brought some of those experiences into popular culture and helped us envision a close-knit, fun, and exciting college community where lifelong friends were made.

The new Hillman enters a world in which that cultural community does not end at the campus gates. It is online. A student can attend an HBCU in the morning, post a TikTok from the student union in the afternoon, participate in a viral campus debate that evening, attend an online class on Canvas or Blackboard, and wake up the next morning to discover that thousands of strangers have opinions about what happened. That changes the meaning of being a college student who extends the legacy of the HBCU experience.

Black College Identity in the Age of Social Media

The original A Different World explored identity primarily through face-to-face interactions on the campus of Hillman College. Characters talked in dorm rooms, classrooms, cafeterias, at student organizations, parties, in restaurants, and campus gatherings. The new generation has another layer of identity to navigate: the digital self.

Today’s college student can curate an online identity that may or may not resemble the person their classmates encounter in person. Social media allows students to control images of themselves, communicate their interests, display relationships, express political and cultural opinions, and participate in conversations extending far beyond campus. For Black college students, this digital space can also become a place for cultural affirmation.

HBCU students can use social media to celebrate campus traditions, showcase fashion, share performances, promote organizations, discuss Black history, support student entrepreneurs, and participate in national conversations about race and education.

But social media can also create unnecessary pressure and a constant need to outdo, outperform, and out post the next person. In other words, it’s a performance. The college experience can become something to perform as well as something to live. The question is how authentic to self can you remain if you’re “doing it for the ‘gram,” TikTok, and in-person classes and relationships?

The question facing a contemporary Hillman student may therefore be more complicated than simply, “Who am I?”

It may also be:

Who am I online?

Who gets to see that version of me?

What happens when my private life becomes public?

How much of my identity am I willing to perform for an audience?

Those questions were largely unimaginable when the original series began.

How Black Womanhood is Influenced in Digital Spaces

Social media also creates an entirely new terrain for representations of Black womanhood. What is most important to today’s Black women college students when presenting their image online? Is it networking to gain internships? Drawing attention from campus sororities? Making friends and dating? Or posting their latest OOTD — outfit of the day?

The women of the original A Different World — Denise, Kim, Whitley, Freddie, Lena, and Jaleesa- of course negotiated their identities, but in person and perhaps with a lot fewer watchful and judgemental eyes on their attire, demeanor, hair, voice tone, and more. They primarily through their relationships, friendships, academics, family expectations, campus culture, and the broader social world. Their conflicts could be deeply personal, but they generally remained within the fictional community of Hillman.

Today’s Black college women navigate those same pressures while confronting a digital culture that constantly produces images and expectations about beauty, femininity, relationships, success, and Black womanhood.

Instagram and TikTok have created spaces where Black women can celebrate their individuality and creativity, build communities, challenge stereotypes, and develop entrepreneurial identities. At the same time, social media can intensify scrutiny surrounding appearance, relationships, sexuality, class, and achievement. The comments can be brutal, and trolls never stop. Some call them monitoring spirits.

The reboot of A Different World might explore how young women navigate their digital selves and connections within the larger HBCU college experience. A contemporary Hillman woman may be simultaneously constructing her academic identity, professional identity, romantic identity, and social-media identity. And those identities can collide.

Imagine a disagreement between friends becoming a viral TikTok. Imagine a campus protest being livestreamed. Imagine someone’s relationship becoming social-media content before the couple has decided whether they want it to be public. Imagine a young Black woman having to decide whether to respond to a sexist or racist comment from thousands of strangers. These are not simply technological problems. They are questions of identity and power.

HBCU Culture Lives Inside Digital Communities

A few years ago, one of the biggest viral phenomena on TikTok was Hillman University, where multiple Black digital creators made short clips teaching in the area of experience and then tagged it on the for you page with #HillmanUniversity. It was a way to promote “Black Excellence” and digital storytelling while also bringing back an aspect of A Different World that fans of the show cherished: the promotion of education and knowledge by any means necessary.

HBCU news and stories are heavily promoted online, via Instagram, Facebook, and Threads, in posts, stories, and reels, not to mention YouTube channels. So it’s a perfect time for the beloved reboot of A Different World to take place, where HBCU schools and content creators can join the promotional train of promoting the show and adding their own flavor to reels to talk about their individual schools. As an HBCU grad, I always said that Hillman was likely modeled after Hampton University, my alma mater. But Howard grads, my Bison friends, may say that Hillman was most definitely modeled after Howard. Still, the AUC can enter the chat and claim that Hillman is a conglomeration of Spelman and Morehouse with a hint of Howard. HBCU rivalries are common, but it’s all love, especially when we post about our pride online.

And with HBCU homecoming season right around the corner, the reboot of A Different World adds more pride to the season for HBCU culture and historic legacies.

A Welcome Conversation Between Generations

I’m looking forward to the previous generation in meaningful connection with the new Hillman students. What advice, wisdom, or guidance might they offer today’s students? How will the lessons they learned on the original series translate to today’s students depicted on the reboot? How are friendship, dating, academic struggles, health, or mental struggles depicted on the show? Because today’s generations are dealing with a whole different level of what it means to be balanced, healthy, and thriving in today’s society and college culture. The students can use the wise, guiding hand of their previous elders who went through it already, except the digital age is not something they were well versed in in the 90s.

The original characters experienced college before smartphones and social media. The new students are growing up in an environment where digital communication is woven into everyday life. Characters such as Whitley and Dwayne can represent one relationship to privacy, community, communication, and adulthood, while the new generation negotiates those same issues through a digital culture.

The contrast does not necessarily have to be framed as “old versus young.” Instead, it can become a conversation about how cultural practices evolve. The older generation remembers a Hillman where experiences happened primarily in person. The new generation experiences a Hillman where an event can happen in person and online simultaneously. And both generations can learn from each other.

A Different World for a Different Media Era

Ultimately, the reboot’s greatest challenge — and perhaps its greatest opportunity — is to understand that it cannot simply reproduce the original A Different World. And with the show’s creator, Felicia Pride, at the helm- a longtime, seasoned TV writer and creator- they understand the assignment to deliver for the fans by recreating this world that we fell in love with and still fall in love with watching the reruns.

Black college students are still navigating friendship, love, education, race, class, gender, family expectations, and adulthood. But they are doing so in a media environment that can make personal experiences public within seconds.

That reality gives the new series another layer of cultural relevance.

The original A Different World asked what it meant to become an adult at an HBCU.

The new series can ask an additional question:

What does it mean to become yourself when the world is watching — and when you have the power to broadcast your own story? That question connects the generations.

For longtime viewers, returning to Hillman offers nostalgia and cultural memory. For younger viewers, the new students offer contemporary experiences that may feel familiar. For everyone in between, the series creates an opportunity to examine how Black college identity has changed across nearly forty years. Hillman, then, becomes more than a campus.

It becomes a conversation between generations about so many areas of life affecting college students in the HBCU community. And perhaps that is exactly what A Different World has always done best: create a space where Black people can see themselves, argue with one another, laugh together, fall in love, make mistakes, challenge the world around them — and imagine what comes next.

Are you looking forward to watching the reboot of A Different World? Let me know in the comments.

DuEwa Frazier is a poet, writer, speaker, scholar, consultant, and digital storyteller. Visit www.duewaworld.com.

Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall’s trailblazing career and leadership in Black women’s studies and Black feminist thought have spanned over 40 years. She studied English as an undergraduate student at Spelman College and continued her studies at Wellesley College and Atlanta University. Destiny would have it that Dr. Guy-Sheftall would later return to Spelman to join the English Department as a professor after teaching English at Alabama State University in Montgomery, Alabama. Dr. Guy-Sheftall became the founder of the Women’s Research and Resource Center at Spelman College in 1981. In her role as Director of Spelman’s Women’s Center, Dr. Guy-Sheftall has been instrumental in developing student activism around misogynist images of Black women in hip-hop culture, as well as on a broad range of social justice issues, including reproductive rights and violence against women. Dr. Guy-Sheftall teaches women’s studies courses, including feminist theory and global Black feminisms. Her notable and groundbreaking publications include Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought (New Press, 1995); an anthology she coedited with Rudolph P. Byrd entitled Traps: African American Men on Gender and Sexuality (Indiana University Press, 2001), Gender Talk: The Struggle for Equality in African American Communities (Random House, 2003) a coauthored monograph (with Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole); and Black! Feminist! FREE! Selected Writings, Interviews & Speeches (Third World Press, 2025). Dr. Guy-Sheftall appeared on The History Makers for a digitally archived interview on September 11, 2007. She has been involved in several advocacy organizations, including the National Black Women’s Health Project, the National Council for Research on Women, and the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, on whose boards she has served. Here is a recent interview I did with Dr. Sheftall—Guy, in the spotlight for Black History Month.

DF: Dr. Guy-Sheftall, you are a trailblazer and foundational leader in Black women’s studies and Black feminist research for over 55 years! Thank you for your groundbreaking work! As the founding director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center (since 1981) and Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies at Spelman College, your important work has created a powerful pathway for other scholars of Black feminist thought to follow. Please tell us what inspired your path early on? Who or what were some of your deepest inspirations?

Dr. Guy-Sheftall: As a graduate student at Atlanta University working on an MA in English in 1968, I started reading feminist literary criticism. Three years later, in 197,1 I joined my alma mater’s English Department and designed its first Women’s Studies courses -Images of Women in Literature and Images of Women in the Media. I attached myself to the evolving women’s liberation movement and the field of Women’s Studies, which underscored for me the necessity of founding an explicitly Black feminist Women’s Center at Spelman and establishing the first Women’s Studies program at an HBCU. My feminist mother, Ernestine Varnado Guy, who raised her three daughters to be independent, self-actualizing, caring, and political, was my most significant and inspirational mentor because of all the ways in which she modeled these values. In other words, she practiced what she preached!!

DF: What has it meant for you to have Spelman College, your alma mater, as your intellectual home base for your teaching practice and leadership in Black women’s studies?

Dr. Guy-Sheftall: I had not planned to stay at Spelman when I returned to teach there in 1971. My marriage brought us to Atlanta, and I stayed. Founding the Women’s Center at an HBCU for women enabled me to provide our students with a Black feminist, queer-friendly, nurturing space that is still special and unusual. Keeping our amazing Spelman Archives as a component of the Center is perhaps our most precious project. It enabled us to secure the personal papers, for example, of Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara, Gloria Joseph, and Angela Bowman — Black feminist icons/comrades/friends.

DF: You are the author or editor of nine notable books focused on Black feminism, politics, history, and Black literature, including Black! Feminist! FREE! Selected Writings, Interviews & Speeches (2025, Third World Press) and Gender Talk: The Struggle for Equality in African American Communities (2003, Random House). You are also the author of book chapters centering Black feminism, Black masculinities, queer students’ identities, Black women’s mental health, and African American art. How do you believe your wide-reaching scholarship has helped to shape current and future generations of Black feminist scholars and Black intellectuals?

Dr. Guy-Sheftall: First, I think these books establish…without question…our long, brilliant history of Black feminist theorizing, teaching, agitating, and activism, the origins of which were our lived experiences, not emulating white feminists, despite the importance of their work. The fields of Black Studies and Women’s Studies would be puny without the decades-long scholarship of Black feminists across many disciplines and around the globe. We can now claim for present and future generations our significant contributions to both fields, as well as “say the names” loudly and proudly of countless Black feminist scholar/activists.

DF: What are your thoughts on how we can best archive and safeguard the intellectual output, publications, and media centered on Black literature and Black women’s studies?

Dr. Guy-Sheftall: More of our important work needs to make its way into university archives, as is the case at Spelman and other majority academic institutions, as well as the Schomburg. We continue to reach out to Black Women’s Studies scholars as they ponder where they might leave their personal papers. We also engage in various faculty development projects at other HBCUs so that Black Women’s Studies will be more visible in their curricula.

DF: How can diverse and Black women scholars best manage issues and challenges they may encounter while answering the call to serve students in higher education? What role might mentorship play?

Dr. Guy-Sheftall: Mentorship in various academic contexts is critical. I can not think of more important work than what we do for diverse students in our classrooms and extracurricular projects on our campuses. Despite its challenges, which are more daunting now given the political situation we are navigating as a result of the last presidential election, I would still choose higher education as my workplace. I love teaching, thinking, writing articles and books, engaging in a variety of social justice mobilizations on and off campus, and spending time with young folks whose lives are shaped in many ways by their college experiences.

DF: What do students of Black and Africana studies, Black feminist studies, and women’s gender and sexuality studies most need during this critical time?

Dr. Guy-Sheftall: Students of these various interdisciplinary fields that focus on the intersection of race, gender, class, and sexuality need to be assured that our programs will continue to thrive in these awful times; that what they are studying is critical for envisioning new worlds and eradicating all oppressions; and that they are poised because of what they have learned..inside and outside classrooms…to help transform a world in dire need of their analysis and work.

DF: What are you most looking forward to in 2026 and why?

Dr. Guy-Sheftall: In 2026, I am most looking forward to writing a memoir in which I can share what I have learned during my 80 years, 47 of which have been spent as a college professor on two HBCU campuses -Alabama State University (1969–1971) and Spelman College (1971–2027).

Thank you!

DuEwa Frazier is a poet, writer, scholar, children’s author, speaker, and consultant. Visit her website at www.duewafrazier.com.

Chester Higgins in front of one his photographs at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling (Photo: Michael Palma Mir)

Chester Higgins (born 1946 in Lexington, Kentucky) has worked as a New York Times staff photographer since 1975 and has exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the world. Higgins is the author of several books including Black Women (1970), Drums of Life (1974), Some Time Ago: A Historical Portrait of Black America from 1850 to 1950 (1980), Feeling the Spirit: Searching the World for the People of Africa (1994), Elder Grace: The Nobility of Aging (2000), Ancient Nubia: African Kingdoms on the Nile (2012), and his memoir, Echo of the Spirit (2004). The Chester Higgins artist file consists of an extensive curriculum vitae (2008), postcards of selected photographs, announcements and invitations to his solo exhibitions (1974, 1990–2012), and a press kit for the exhibition “Invoking the Spirit: Worship Traditions in the African World”, which was on view at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Also in the file are announcements to his lectures; copies of his weekly column, “Lens”, which was published in The New York Times (1992, 2006); reviews of two of his books; a sales blad for Feeling the Spirit; and a calendar and teacher’s resource manual for his book Elder Grace. Articles featuring his photographs in The New York Times Magazine” and a variety of other magazines complete the collection (1990–2007).

Sacred Nile by Chester Higgins (2021)

Photographers capture the essence of a person or a happening, convey the emotion of a time period, and record historical meaning in a moment. Noted photographer, author, and visual artist, Chester Higgins, looks for the marriage between nature and life, capturing the soul of a people, and the brilliance of a community, the world over, among the African diaspora from New York City to the Sacred Nile. As a New York Times staff photographer for many years, Higgins’ work represents the lens of an artist who has had a front row seat in capturing events, geography, community, and performance, resulting in a lifetime of a rich and varied body of work. This is evident in his photo essay books, archived photographs at the New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and in exhibits in galleries and museums. Here is an interview with Mr. Higgins, in the spotlight for Black History Month.

DF: You are a renowned photographer, author, and visual artist, showcasing the lives, beauty, and experiences of people of the African diaspora. What has it been like for you to be in service to the community in this way?

CH: I love the work that I do using my camera to make love to my people and my community. From the beginning, my mission has been and continues to be to give visual presence to the worthiness of my people, and the Spirit has given me life and led me on this way to reach out to our people here in the Americas, the African continent, and Europe. In many ways by visiting our cousins in Africa has given me a mirror of the cultural history that is buried deep within our DNA.

DF: You were a New York Times staff photographer for decades, from 1974 to 2012. How did you grow as an artist and person who also became an author during these years?

CH: As an artist, I was fortunate to be mentored by the Tuskegee photographer P.H. Polk, who instilled in me the mission to show our people at their best. Then mentored by Arthur Rothstein, the Director of Photography at LOOK magazine, who wrote many books on photography, and taught me visual linguistics. Afterwards, to be mentored by Gordon Parks, who confirmed my mission and became a great sounding board on how to navigate the corporate world. Finally, my mentor Romare Bearden enhanced my understanding of light as a form and learning to appreciate life as a ceremony constantly in motion.

This visual foundation made it possible for me to take advantage of my years at the NYT to maximize that platform’s ability for the distribution of my vision that showed the decency, dignity, and pride of my people, placing these images in front of the decision-making class of America.

Elder Grace: The Nobility of Aging by Chester Higgins (2000)

DF: Your notable essay books include Feeling the Spirit and Elder Grace: The Nobility of Aging. What was it like to merge your love of photography with your writing for these books?

CH: The books were an outgrowth of my desire to spread the word of what I was discovering. If it is true that we become what we eat, I feel the same way about what we visually consume. We live in a world that hates us, and because that negative media surrounds us, its values seep into our consciousness, and the result is that it feeds our self-hate. I know that I can’t change that dominant media message, but if I can just get to add some of my images to the national visual diet, it might become a balm to our traumatized souls.

Feeling the Spirit by Chester Higgins (1994)

DF: What have you learned about people of the African diaspora during your world travels?

CH: We are a wonderful people filled with spirituality, creativity, and genius. I believe that there are no greater people than disciplined, competent Black minds moving with a mission and focused on problem-solving. When I see these kinds of people, I’m so happy to be alive, to witness them and use my camera to make a record of their existence. These are the kind of people that we need to uplift.

Because of self-hate and the trauma of slavery, which is not our history, it’s white history, so many of us hate the roots of our great-grandparents and their connection to Africa. But as Malcolm said, “Who taught you to hate yourself?“ Our enemy taught us to hate ourselves when we were forced to worship the “Slave Bible” on the plantations to pacify our desire for freedom, when our forebears were forcibly separated from the identity of their names, their children, and each other, and then despised.

Travel has allowed me to experience the world family of African people and co-mingle with my cousins on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as along the Indian Ocean. There is a spiritual and cultural bond that all African people share that overrides the limitations of national borders, the condition of slavery, and colonialisation. This observation of oneness was made throughout my book, Feeling the Spirit: Searching the World for the People of Africa. As people of color, we have so much in common regardless of where the slave ships landed, and our people disembarked. We must never lose sight of the fact that it’s not where we landed but where the ship began its voyage — Mother Africa. We are an African people. An Ethiopian priest taught me that a more accurate description of exactly who the African population in the Americas really is: we are western-born Africans, not African Americans. My Ghanaian friend pointed out to me that the term African American points to the tragedy of our existence; due to this tear in our fabric of time, we are Africans without memory and Americans without privilege.

“Traditional Dancer, Ghana,” 1973 (Photo: Chester Higgins)

DF: Your work is archived with the New York Public Library, The Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture. Please tell us why archiving of this work is important.

CH: Archiving is memory, and accessibility is key to the transmission of knowledge. The lack of memory leaves people disoriented. To this day, we as a people suffer a great deal from not being aware of the richness of our past and our inheritance of greatness. Unfortunately, ignorance is very expensive. The New York Public Library and Schomburg Archives are echo chambers for future generations. I am very proud of the fact that my work is considered culturally valuable enough to be included in these collections. So it’s very important for the people who are researchers and love knowledge to be able to find these nuggets or memories and use their skills to recirculate their findings in various ways to rework this memory for the benefit of succeeding generations.

DF: Who were some of your all-time favorite subjects to photograph and why?

CH: At the age of 21, I picked up the camera to photograph the two most important people to me in my life: my great-aunt, the midwife Shugg McGowan Lampley, and her brother, my great-uncle March Fourth McGowan. Since then, I have photographed many famous people, but I prefer the non-famous because I’m in love with the spirit of everyday people. I’m still in love with the people that my grandmother Faith McGown Smith termed as ‘no matter who they are, they are some mother’s child’. So I have deep respect for the accomplished ones, but my camera has no favorites.

DF: Your work has featured in international exhibitions and is held in notable collections, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, and The Brooklyn Museum of Art. What has that been like for your work to be accessible to others in various art spaces?

CH: To be present, to have my people visit in these ivory halls of art, admiring how I present them, is heartwarming. To me, this only means that my work has deservedly become accessible to those wider communities and that when one of us sees my work on the walls of those institutions, it reaffirms our right to be there and causes their hearts to smile.

DF: Digital works are shared on social media, and visual art has become widely consumed online. Do people still hold the same value for art and photography as years passed?

CH: Over time mediums have changed and will continue to do so. Such changes open up new possibilities for the human mind, and our minds will adapt. To me, the medium is less important than the content, the message. As an artist, my mission is to use whatever medium there is to make a home for my message of discovery and love for humanity.

DF: AI threatens to take away the originality of art and intellectual property for original creators. What can we do to best archive and protect our original works today?

CH: One cannot control the future or the creativity of the human mind. The Spirit is in charge. Archiving is our effort to make the future the custodian of the past.

DF: What advice might you offer for emerging artists and younger generations who aspire to be successful in their visual art?

CH: Each of us has a singular purpose. If one is fortunate enough to self-analyze and discover that purpose, then run with it. Take seriously the issues of focus, discipline, message, and an understanding of the industry. Find your path, gather the skills to make it work, and put maximum effort into it. Expect setbacks, learn from them, and get back up and keep running forward. Always invest in your dream. When you reach one goal, make a new one. Challenge and extend yourself, and keep repeating.

DF: Tell us what you are looking forward to in 2026 and beyond, for yourself and the community you are a part of?

CH: 2026 is the right time to treat your beautiful minds to my book Sacred Nile, which clarifies our sacred inheritance and history before the Book of Genesis. (SacredNile.com) For me, 2026 is the year to continue my explorations of river culture along the White Nile, which begins on the border of the Congo and Rwanda, looking for its early influence on ancient Kemet (Egypt).

Thank you!

For more information on Chester Higgins and his book Sacred Nile, visit www.sacrednile.com

DuEwa Frazier is a poet, writer, scholar, children’s author, digital creator, and consultant. Visit www.duewaworld.com.

Today is the Genius of the South, Zora Neale Hurston’s birthday. My favorite writer, Zora didn’t do subtleties - she was a beautiful storm in literary form. Her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), is perfect in every way. Perfect in its voice, plot, characterization, omniscient narration, settings, and complexities in language.

What else can we learn from Zora Neale Hurston? She wasn’t just a master novelist; she was also a master of short prose, comedy, playwrighting, folklore, gaining funding for her work, and a master at staying one step ahead of everyone else who thought they had her all figured out.

If Zora were here today, I believe she would champion Black women writers and create a writer’s colony of her own. I also think she would be living by the motto, “Rest and resist.”

What would the Writer’s Colony be called? Zora’s Place? Zora’s Colony? There are so many names that might fit.

Envisioning a writer’s colony run by Zora. Located in Florida, of course, which is warm, sunny, and close to Zora’s roots. I think the writer’s colony would be donation-based for writers, but grant-funded by organizations and individuals who Zora was close to. The colony would be ideal for writers of all genres and especially marginalized voices of all backgrounds and identities. Zora would not exclude anyone. Would you need to submit writing samples? Of course? Would you need an MFA or prior fellowships? Heck NO! Lol.

I think she would be the ultimate host, but in a way that makes you feel like it’s your home. I believe Zora would live on the grounds and that the food served would be straight from her gardens, cows, pigs, and chickens. But for breakfast, Southern-style grits and ham are definitely on the menu. Remember, this is Zora from Eatonville.

Zora’s colony has plenty of land. Because after all, Zora is a prosperous writer who invested. I see wide open grassland, horses, and fruit trees. Zora would occasionally teach a master class. But she might mostly show up at dinner time to sit comfortably in the main den, smoke a cigarette, and tell eye-opening and hilarious stories to the writers about her many travels, how her works were published, who her greatest loves were, and of course what she’s working on now - because yes, she’s still writing!

Collected artifacts, artworks, and other keepsakes would adorn the walls of the colony, even the most memorable ones she collected in the South and in Haiti.

Otherwise, Zora would leave writers to think, rest, and write, making full use of the bountiful natural environment and the supportive space.

The colony would be low tech, but if you really need your MacBook, you’d have to bring it yourself because Zora isn’t running up her light bill with all of that computer!

If you ever read the biography Wrapped in Rainbows written on Zora’s life by notable writer, Valerie Boyd, you will come to understand Zora’s passions and her struggles to make it as an artist. The life of a Black woman and a creative during Zora’s time wasn’t easy, but she achieved more than most. This is why I think Zora would create a fantastic writers’ colony because she knows what it took for her to write in less-than-ideal circumstances.

I have taught Zora’s notable novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, dozens of times, both for high school students in AP English and Black literature courses at the college level. I always teach Zora’s background and where she came from, in addition to her perspective on folklore. It’s important for students to understand the perspective Zora held and how so many things impacted her worldview, like how publishing was a game, especially for a Black woman back then, and issues in racism, class, gender, educational access, and economics affected her.

Several works of Zora’s have been released in recent years, including Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo (2018) and Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick (2020).

Were it not for renowned writer Alice Walker, who marked Zora’s gravesite, we might not know who Zora Neale Hurston is today.

In 2020, I wrote a Medium.com article about Zora and Their Eyes Were Watching God. You can check it out here.

What do you think Zora would say to us today? What is your favorite book, essay, or short story by Zora Neale Hurston? What would Zora’s writers’ colony be like?

DuEwa Frazier is a poet, writer, speaker, scholar, digital creator, and podcast producer/host of Nerdacity, Afrofutures Pod, and others. She writes at Substack, on Medium, and she’s the founder of Black Scholars in Podcasting. Visit www.duewaworld.com for more information.

Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts (2024 Routledge) delivers a fresh and contemporary introduction to Afrofuturism, discussing key themes, understandings, and interdisciplinary topics across multiple genres in Black literature, film, and music. From Afrofuturism’s origins to the present, this critical volume features scholarly works, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction which illuminates on the contributions of notable Afrofuturists such as Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, Saul Williams, Prince, and more. The volume highlights the impact of films such as Black Panther (2018, 2022), The Woman King (2022), and They Cloned Tyrone (2023) and covers a variety of essential topics giving students a comprehensive view of the legacy of storytelling and the tradition of “remixing” in Black literature and arts.

Afrofuturism is more than a genre — it is a cultural movement, an intellectual practice, and an artistic toolkit for reimagining Black futures. It emerges at the intersection of science fiction, history, and liberation aesthetics, weaving together technology, folklore, spirituality, and radical imagination. To speak of Afrofuturism is to speak of time travel: of reclaiming suppressed pasts, challenging present realities, and projecting liberated Black futures into the realms of art, literature, music, and performance.

The term “Afrofuturism” was coined in the 1990s by cultural critic Mark Dery, who used it to describe speculative work by Black artists envisioning futures through the lens of African diasporic experience. Yet, its roots stretch back further: to the cosmic jazz of Sun Ra, the mythic poetics of Octavia E. Butler, the funk utopias of Parliament-Funkadelic, and even the spiritual-ancestral visions encoded in African folklore. These works made Blackness not only present in imagined futures but central to defining them.

The term “mixtape” signals the way Afrofuturism resists neat categorization. Hip-hop is known for the mixtape — a sampling of the best records. Like a mixtape, it is layered, eclectic, and deeply intertextual — sampling history, remixing technology, and looping visions of freedom. In literature, Afrofuturism appears in the novels of Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Nnedi Okorafor, and Colson Whitehead, who blend speculative tropes with explorations of race, identity, and power. In the visual arts, figures like Wangechi Mutu and Cauleen Smith use collage, film, and multimedia installations to project hybrid realities where African diasporic traditions meet alien futures.

Introduction to Afrofuturism is a mixtape stitched from cosmic jazz, speculative fiction, ancestral myth, and digital rhythm. Musicians such as Janelle Monáe carry forward the sonic lineage of Sun Ra and George Clinton, crafting android alter-egos that explore gender, race, and liberation in digital landscapes. Each track is different, yet the playlist holds: a pulse of survival, imagination, and liberation.

The mixtape:

PART I. Black Poetics, Creative Nonfiction, Drama & Prose

1. CURTIS L. CRISLER

Last Stop to Dine

Looking for Hurston in a Triptych

Fifty Something Years of Letters Laters (my paradoxical absolution of Emmett Till)

The Automatism of Reflection on Creation and Space — a Triptych (featuring Alice Coltrane’s symphonic aura)

2. ZORINA EXIE FREY

I Heart Music: Hip-Hop is Dead. Long Live Hip-Hop

I’m a Black man wearing the stars and stripes, what don’t I understand?

3. RAN WALKER

Mason Dixon

The Multiverse of a Heart

A Soulful Meditation

4. ALAN KING

Cornbread Othello

5. RAINA J. LEȎN

poet: on imagining Planet X as the only safe space

Whispers and rockets

6. ARTHUR RICKYDOC FLOWERS, JR.

Afroprophetica: A Hoodoo Future

PART II. Black Music & Film

7. PAUL YOUNGQUIST

Satellites are Spinning: Notes on a Sun Ra Poem

8. DUEWA M. FRAZIER

Juice from the Mind: Afrofuturism in Hip-Hop and Black Visual Culture

9. CHRISTIAN M. HINES

Young, Gifted, and Black: Exploring the Community Building of Science and Sisterhood in Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

10. JULIETTE GOUTIERRE

Hacking Boundaries and Subverting Systems of Oppression in Neptune Frost (2021)

11. DOUGLAS RASMUSSEN

“Heaven somewhere in the future”: The Digital imagination of Prince’s Art Official Age

12. JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN

My Life in The New Wave: On My Origins as A Black Fabulist

13. JEREMY LAUGHERY

“It’s Not What I See, But What I See Through”: Queer Afrofuturism and Afrosurrealism in Neptune Frost (2021)

14. OLAYOMBO RAJI-OYELADE

Altering Normative Epistemologies in African Speculative Fiction: A Reading Of The Woman King (2022)

15. OLIVIA UZODIMA EKEH

I’m a Witness: Surviving Dystopia Through the Sonic Memory of Black Women in When I Get Home

16. SHERNĀ ANN PHILLIPS

In The Afro-Future, Even Jezebels Like ‘Yo-Yo’ Deserve to Be Saved: An Exploration of Black Female Characters in They Cloned Tyrone (2023)

PART III. Black Feminisms and Luminaries in Speculative Prose

17. ANINDITA GHOSAL and ARITRA GHOSAL

Imag(in)ings Afrofuturistic Assemblages: Nurturing Multispecies Entanglement in Nnedi Okorofor’s Graphic narrative LaGuardia.

18. FLOURICE W. RICHARDSON

Exploring Afrofuturism as a Tool to Dismantle Hegemony in Octavia Butler’s “The Evening and the Morning and the Night”

19. HEATHER THAXTER

Seeing is believing: An Afrofuturist reading of the visual medium of Duffy and Jennings’s graphic novel adaptation of Parable of the Sower.

20. AYANA HARDAWAY

Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars): Black Women & Ancient Wisdom

21. JADA SIMILTON

Demystifying the Speculative: An Ifa reading of Stigmata.

22. JASMINE H. WADE

Live and Let Live Black Feminism and Difference

23. KEISHA ALLAN

Verbal Marronage as Linguistic Resistance in Midnight Robber

24. MICHAEL RA-SHON HALL

How did I (We) Get Here?: Speculative Time Travel and the Contested Place of Technology in Afrofuturistic Fictions

25. VICTORIA MOTEN

Mother(ship) Intuition: Black Women Protagonists in Afrofuturism

26. AK WRIGHT

F.A.M: Trans-Afrofuturism in Janelle Monae’s and Danny Lore’s “Nevermind”

Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature and Arts, makes connections across academic subject areas and is an engaging reader for pop culture and media film studies, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, Black and Africana studies, hip-hop studies, creative writing, and composition and rhetoric.by DuEwa Frazier

DuEwa Frazier is a poet, writer, speaker, program leader, consultant, scholar, and digital creator. Visit www.duewaworld.com.

Writers dream about writing even when they’re not writing. It’s probably the same for academics, except for academics there’s a waking anxiety that creeps up on you when you’re on the clock as far as your publishing goes. And we know what clock that is. Tick tick tick…

If you’re new on your tenure track, or maybe you’re a lecturer or adjunct who is looking toward applying for TT job this year, you’ve got publishing on your mind. It’s July 22nd and most academics are heading back to work, back to class in 30 days or less. Summer is almost over.

If you were keen or at least strategic, you probably started writing and submitting your work right when school was out in May or early June and by now you’ve gotten some responses. If you didn’t, I’m not judging. Maybe you had a rough Spring semester and May to now has been recouping your mental health.

Summer provides precious time for academics on break, to conduct research, turn your dissertation into a book chapter, or put the finishing touches on that book proposal. Or at least to have a handful of journals or other publications you plan to submit to before things get hectic in September.

Did you meet your goal? Or at least set one? Among the groups that I’m apart of I’ve observed an exciting push toward getting groups of fellow faculty together online who need to write but haven’t been doing so on their own.

Are writing groups really working to gain the kind of motivation and direction one needs to push out publications before summer’s end?

I think that writing groups are great, but only if each individual has their goals already set.

When I planned my publishing before and during my summers while on the TT, I didn’t do it in a group. I became my own coach. I set my writing goals and kept track of my submissions in a document I created. I wrote regularly and made contacts with those in publishing who would accept my work. I had dogged determination and a clear focus.

The same way you need to be doggedly determined to finish your doctorate degree or apply for jobs, is the same kind of determination you need for your writing goals. Like literally chase it!

In less than two years, I churned out two edited volumes, one scholarly edited volume published by IGI Global and the second, my most recent book, a hybrid (edited volume with scholarship and creative writing) published by Routledge. I worked for three summers on my research and writing. Did I take breaks - yes but it was like the kind of breaks you take from having a second or third job. Breathers really, not breaks. I also did a lot of research on academic publishing and scholarship as an academic. Because these are things that no one teaches you, unless you had a really good doctoral chair who mentored you and actually cared about the path you were heading to after earning your degree.

I didn’t have a mentor for academic publishing. And I didn’t have an agent solely assigned to me to follow and push me along for my writing journey. I’ve always admired writers who seem to have someone to hold their hand at every phase, it makes their journey easier. I guess I was supposed to teach and help other academics, thus I had to teach myself.

But it’s a great accomplishment to use your summers to write and send out submissions. Your work is not finished however when summer ends. Serving as an editor of two published volumes, I did a lot of editing and follow up during the academic year while I was also teaching and doing my faculty service. It can be managed but you have to be really good at compartmentalizing and going for stretches where all you’re doing is working - no play time.

If your goal is tenure and rank at your institution or a new FT faculty job, you’ll want to set clear publishing goals for yourself that you can attain. Being pretty ambitious and focused on my publishing, I was going to meet my goals whether I had the support or not, but that is my personality.

New academics should have mentoring at their respective institutions or at least seek out a mentor or coach outside of your university so that you can meet your marks in the scholarship area.

What remains of your summer writing before heading back to the classroom is up to you.

If you’re interested in a coach mentor to help you make your final weeks of summer a productive one for your writing goals, let me know. I’m the founder of Never Scared Writers & Academics. Now accepting clients for coaching.

DuEwa Frazier is a poet, writer, digital storyteller, children’s / YA author, speaker, founder of DuEwa World Digital, and scholar who is finishing projects and coaching others. Check out Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts edited by DuEwa Frazier, published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Visit www.duewafrazier.com

What do you do when you have unanswered questions? Many spiritual texts tell you that all answers are within. That our deepest turmoil is just a lesson or a guide helping us to get to the next phase of our life, but most people advise you to seek therapy right away when you’re in turmoil.

Everyone tells you that when you’re going through any kind of life change, or perhaps you’ve faced a difficult decision or other serious occurrence, “GO to therapy.” And any sign a self-doubt or anguish over a past relationship, people say “RUN to therapy.” But sometimes therapy isn’t the answer.

In the popular 80’s film The Last Dragon, Leroy Green (Bruce Leroy played by Taimak) wanted to be a master like Bruce Lee. He got tired of being bullied by Sho’nuff and seeking power and answers from everywhere else but himself. But he finally realized he had the right tools. I am - the master. It’s kind of like that.

When we forget who we are, we turn to everyone and everything outside of ourselves.

I enjoy smelling the roses. Taking an active part in life, to embrace life’s scenes, colors, sounds, and adventures. I believe half of our problems are because we (I) don’t laugh more, get out more, go on vacation more, dance more, and write more. The reason I don’t include other people in that list is because we cannot control others. You can invite or try to drag others into your program but it’s not always a good mix. So, we can’t depend on others to make us happy and healed either.

And then there’s the still small voice everyone has. Some call it an inner child. For Christian believers, it’s the Holy Spirit. For many it’s intuition. For others it’s your guardian or angel spirit. Sit still and listen.

In a time of questions, I thought to do what I’ve always done. Pour myself onto a page and let my life flow. And instead of holding on tight - let go. Bars.

I thought back to when I was nine years old. I cherished my little notebooks. I wrote in them constantly from my elementary school years, through middle school, and high school. I wrote about how my day went. I wrote about my dreams. I wrote about the people I loved and the people who disappointed me. I wrote about my fun and silly friends. I wrote about riding my bike and gardening with my grandparents. I wrote songs and poems. I drew weird drawings. I cut out pictures from magazines of fashions I liked and places I wanted to visit. I wrote letters. I wrote lists of things I wanted to do, be, and see. I wrote about my favorite music. I wrote about my plans, all of the things I wanted to do. I now believe those early writings were my love letters, to myself, maps for how to navigate my life, and the encyclopedia for who I was and the gifts that would blossom.

Most of what I wrote about as my goals and dreams as a kid - I became those things later in life. I am still becoming.

Writing is healing and it is a form of therapy. I’ve read that journaling is like talking to yourself. Some deeply spiritual people believe that you can sit down to meditate and pray and then wait for answers to the questions you have. Your guide will answer. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s worth a shot. At least you’ll answer when you open a new page in that journal and just let it out.

I think writing saves a person. And I think during the worst times of your life, writing is necessary. You know yourself better than anyone else. Depending on your faith, any storm can be triumphed over with patience, self-love, and the thinking, “I’ve seen this before. I must remember what I did the last time when I faced this.”

If I do what I did as a kid - write my lists and dreams, affirm who I am, have faith, and know that what I did before got me to a good place, I’m back to a kind of therapy that I didn’t know was therapy back then. I’m back to being my own best friend.

When was the last time you made a point to write just for you?

DuEwa Frazier is a lifelong creative who wears many hats like poet, writer, speaker, children’s author, digital creator, founder, scholar, publisher, and NERD IN CHIEF. www.duewafrazier.com

Ananda Lewis was “Black girl magic” before the term was coined as a phrase to celebrate the beauty, brilliance, and persistence of a generation of innovative and successful Black women.

Ananda was a positive and intelligent young Black woman in media and journalism, during an age of pop culture, when few Black women were at the forefront. It was during the late 90s when hip-hop was starting to take over and become a global cultural force. And right in the midst of this cultural shift, there was a well-educated, stunning, personable young lady, who interviewed the best in entertainment, politics, and sports - Ananda Lewis.

When I heard the news that model, social media personality, broadcast journalist, former MTV VJ, and talk show host, Ms. Ananda Lewis had passed, I was shocked and saddened. If you followed Ananda over the years on any of her social media accounts, you knew of her battle.

Ananda first found a lump in her breast in 2018 and revealed her diagnosis to the public in 2020. She began to urge women to be vigilant over their breast health.

She chronicled her battle with breast cancer for several years. She recorded Instagram videos and featured on podcasts discussing her journey to educate herself on traditional and natural treatments for breast cancer. By 2019 her cancer was at stage 3.

During an interview with Atlanta Black Star media Ananda shared that her mother had undergone treatment for breast cancer, and that she herself regretted not having regular mammograms due to her concern about the radiation in the exam. She also explained that she had a history of having fibrous breasts and had to decipher between regular fibrous breast tissue and the tumor. She stated that she, “Didn’t have the benefit of time” being on her side for treatment. Ananda chose to do 10% of chemo with the remaining of her treatment being holistic protocols.

Ananda’s sister, Dr. Lakshmi Emory stated that Ananda fought to the very end, remarking, “That moment was heartbreaking and beautiful when she took her final breath. She wanted to make it to the day of her son’s graduation, and she did.” Lakshmi was her caretaker while she was in hospice. Her sister is also a cancer survivor and shared that Ananda chose to not go fully traditionally in her treatment, noting “She was very successful in extending her life.”

Born Sarasvati Ananda Lewis on March 21, 1973, in Los Angeles, California, Ananda was destined to be a star in the spotlight. She attended San Diego School of Creative and Performative Arts for nine years. Ananda attended college at Howard University and graduated cum laude in 1995, with the BA degree in History.

She featured in the 90’s music video for “Baby I’m Yours” by R&B group, Shai. Ananda hosted BET’s popular show Teen Summitt from 1993 to 1996, overlapping with her final years of being at Howard for undergrad.

By 1997 Ananda was hosting for MTV on the popular Total Request Live (TRL), Hot Zone, and MTV Jams. She was the host of a documentary, “True Life: I Am Driving While Black”, also featuring Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg.

In 2000, Ananda was selected as one of People Magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People.”

Ananda became the host of her eponymous talk show in 2001, which launched the day before the 9/11 tragedy in New York City and ran for two seasons. Ananda later became a correspondent for The Insider, a spin-off from Entertainment Tonight.

She was an outspoken activist, who championed youth and challenged Black stereotypes. Ananda interviewed everyone from NBA legend Kobe Bryant to First Lady Hillary Clinton.

Ananda spoke and interviewed on topics she cared about, including issues affecting the Black community, politics, how women appeared in hip-hop videos, women’s health and self-esteem, relationships and more. In one magazine interview, Ananda discussed her own journey making the personal choice to become celibate.

She featured on the cover of the popular women’s magazine, Honey more than once, when then editor, Amy DuBois Barnett was at the helm.

Ananda Lewis walked away from the entertainment spotlight on her own terms, to focus on family, homeschooling, and her interests in carpentry, home renovation, health, and connecting with fans on her social media. She was well known and loved across entertainment circles as evidence of the outpouring of affection that many shared when the news of her passing was announced.

Sometime before her passing, Ananda gave a tearful address to her family, fans, and friends. Wearing a beautiful purple, white, and pink dress, and rose quartz necklace, Ananda gave a heartfelt thank you, discussed her journey, and offered encouragement, for people to “Forgive and love, protect your joy and happiness at all costs no matter who you have to cut off…”

Ananda Lewis during her time on this earth, was a symbol of what a young woman can accomplish. She was a curious and thoughtful voice of our generation, a women’s health advocate, and a representation of women’s empowerment, beauty, intellect, and independence. Her friends, family, and fans will miss her. She leaves behind her cherished 14-year-old son Langston.

DuEwa Frazier is a writer, digital storyteller, consultant, scholar, founder, and podcaster @nerdacityarts. Visit www.duewafrazier.com.

Nikki was a poem. Nikki was a force. Nikki was a word sorcerer. Nikki was a mother. Nikki was a mentor. Nikki was a teacher. Nikki was a beloved member of the poetry community and the VA Tech community. It is an understatement that she loved her people — Black people. She also loved good home cooking, Tupac Shakur, jazz and gospel hymns, her friends, students, family, and loved ones.

Personal Reflection on Nikki Giovanni

I cried when I first heard of Nikki’s passing. One of my poetry mothers had returned to the source. I met Nikki Giovanni when I was an undergraduate student at Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. Nikki had come to give a reading and signing at the Hampton Public Library, so my friends, fellow English majors and I went. I’ll never forget how friendly and warm Nikki was. She signed my copy of her book, Gemini for me. I became a student of her work at a distance since I was not one of her students at VA Tech. My education as a poet, was started with Nikki’s poems. Like most young Black women poets, I wanted to sit at her feet to learn her magic, and I did. At a young age, Nikki took her writing and her activism very seriously. She was a loud and proud voice for the Black community and a symbol of a woman’s autonomy to live her truth in the arts and all other aspects of living. She believed in her work and didn’t allow anyone to block her progress as an artist and thinker. Much like some of my other literary mothers and sheroes, Zora Neale Hurston and Ntozake Shange, Nikki was a renegade who walked to the beat of her own djembe drum. Nikki’s poem, “Ego Tripping” gave me the confidence to write about love, culture, and history, the way she did in my own poems. Her spoken word delivery was always so powerful, sassy, and real - it inspired me in my own performances as a young poet in Brooklyn. I am thankful to have given tribute to Nikki Giovanni during a 2016 Women’s History Month program at the Missouri History Museum, in St. Louis, Missouri.

Tribute to Nikki Giovanni at VA Tech

The love tributes overflowed in remembrance of all that Nikki Giovanni was on yesterday, June 8, 2025, one day after she would have celebrated her 82nd birthday, for Nikki Giovanni’s Memorial with the theme of “Black Love is Black Wealth” at the Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. Nikki Giovanni was a Distinguished Professor in English for 40 years, at VA Tech.

The author of over 20 books of poetry, nonfiction, and children’s writings, and a recording artist of over 10 albums and many collaborations with other noted poets and musicians, Nikki Giovanni passed after a diagnosis with cancer on December 9, 2025, her life partner Virginia “Ginney” Fowler had been by her side. Nikki’s life and contributions to the literary and arts community, and the community at VA Tech lives on. The tributes for Nikki yesterday are a testament to the way she loved, the way she spoke, the way she created, and the way she showed up for those around her throughout her life.

Notable poet and children’s author, Kwame Alexander hosted the memorial along with award-winning young adult author and educator, Renee Watson.

Renee Watson spoke of being adopted by Nikki Giovanni, and that she recognized the value of having her two mothers — her mother, and Nikki Giovanni as an artistic and spiritual mother. She shared that when her mother passed, Nikki Giovanni reached out to her everyday to check on her during the first 30 days that she was without her mother. Nikki’s love and nurturing was truly felt in Renee’s life.

The memorial featured a rich presentation of literary stars, dance tribute, musical tributes, resolution from VA assembly, VA Tech alumni and faculty, and a comedian all honoring Nikki Giovanni.

There were several tributes of featured poets and writers reading Nikki’s poetry:

Award-winning novelist and short story writer, Edwidge Danticat, read Nikki’s poem, “Love: Is a Human Condition.”

Glenis Redmond, the First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina, read Nikki Giovanni’s poem, “Nikki-Rosa.”

Poet, playwright, and performer, Goldie Patrick read Nikki’s poem, “Resignation.”

Dr. Tonya Maria Matthews, a poet, scientist, and thought leader, read Nikki’s poem, “For a Lady Whose Voice I Like.” Matthews also performed “Ego Tripping” in choral reading with Mahogany L. Browne, Glenis Redmond, and other poets.

Nine members of the Wintergreen Womens Writers Collective, all wearing beautiful white attire, gave a choral reading of Nikki’s poem, “Quilting the black eyed pea were going to Mars.” The collective formed in 1987 after a gathering with Nikki Giovanni at the Wintergreen Resort in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Other notable poets and writers giving tribute include notable novelist, Tayari Jones who spoke of Nikki Giovanni’s deep love for community and bringing awareness to issues. Poet, professor, and children’s author Tony Medina, read a poem with love for Nikki Giovanni, mentioning that soul singer, Teena Marie included Nikki’s name in her famous song “Square Biz.”

Poets also shared original poems they wrote for Nikki or poems that expressed sentiments that connected Nikki’s life to love, community, Black womanhood, and the arts.

Kwame Alexander gave a warm tribute to Nikki Giovanni sharing a funny anecdote about being one of Nikki’s students in her poetry classes at VA Tech when he was in undergrad. Kwame remembered that he earned Cs in Nikki’s class and during a conference with her she remarked, “I can teach you how to write a poem, but I can’t teach you to be interesting.” The audience laughed at his surprising anectdote, and Kwame’s tribute continued with his spoken word performance, “Golden Words” accompanied by the legendary singing group, Sweet Honey in the Rock.” Kwame gained audience engagement, as they repeated some of the words of the poem as the music played.

MacArthur genius grant winner, poet Jericho Brown read his poem “Black Dictionary,” a poem in the style of Nikki Giovanni’s famed poem “Ego Tripping.”

Famed Detroit poet, publisher, and musician, jessica Care moore, shared memories of having traveled with Nikki Giovanni since the age of 22, and read one of her original poems encouraging the new generation of women rappers to aspire to a higher purpose in the art, like Nikki Giovanni and iconic female rappers such as Queen Latifah and MC Lyte have.

Renee Watson read her poem, “Heaven,” which shared about her imagining that her mother, and Nikki’s grandmother met in heaven, a line in the poem, “look at our babies see them down there ain’t they a wonder?” Renee created the poem to highlight how Black women gather and discuss how proud they are of their children.

Musical tributes for Nikki Giovanni at yesterday’s memorial, lifted the room and honored a poet who deeply loved music.

Soloist Dr. Gena Chandler performed two beautiful hymns with the Blacksburg Master Chorale in honor of Nikki Giovanni.

Sweet Honey in the Rock filled the auditorium with the great spirit, and left us on high after their performance with poet, Kwame Alexander.

Cellist Shana Tucker performed her beautiful rendition of “My Favorite Things” from her 2024 album, “Hiding the Light.”

Acclaimed tenor saxophonist, gave tribute of two songs “Wade in the Water” and “Theme for Nikki Giovanni” with his jazz trio. Jackson also a professor and chair of jazz studies at the University of Hartford , talked about Nikki Giovanni’s love of jazz and spirituals. He shared a funny story of meeting Nikki at a restaurant, and discovering that she also loved wine and oysters. Jackson has recorded music with Nikki Giovanni.

Other guest speakers informed the audience on how Nikki Giovanni’s legacy would continue:

Julieana L. Richardson founder and president of The History Makers digital archive, spoke of Nikki Giovanni as a historian and lover of archives and discussed the opening to the public, of Nikki Giovanni’s personal and professional papers that has been housed at Boston University since 1971.

Chris Obenshain, delegate for Virginia’s 41st House of Delegates spoke about a new resolution to honor the celebration of Nikki Giovanni’s life, work, and contributions in Blacksburg and at Virginia Tech.

Former students of Nikki’s and alumni of VA Tech shared about their remembrances of Nikki, stating, “She was ours she was VA tech we should be grateful to have lived during the same time as her.” President of Virginia Tech, Timothy Sands spoke about Nikki’s 40 year commitment of service as a faculty member who taught creative writing, and cared about the University community. Faculty in the English department gave a choral tribute to Nikki, highlighting her important work and focus in making the community and world a better place.

BK Fulton, media executive and film producer, also a former student of Nikki’s discussed how she inspired him to continue his academic studies and pursue law school among other career accomplishments.

Leah Glynn president and founder of Leah Glynn Dance Theater — community based art making rooted in social justice, introduced the dance performance “Hush” which she stated was inspired by relationship with her autistic son and reminds her of how Nikki Giovanni “held space and created space for so many, my wintergreen sister, my soror, we dance for you.”

Comedian, social commentator, and television host, W. Kamau Bell, spoke of meeting and having interviewed Nikki Giovanni on his podcast and his CNN show “United Shades of America,” and how Nikki Giovanni influenced him during his time of knowing her.

Throughout the afternoon memorial, video clips of interviews where Nikki Giovanni spoke on her life and writings, were interspersed during the program. During one clip, Nikki Giovanni is seen talking with the great writer and thinker, James Baldwin. In these clips, Nikki speaks with the fire in her eyes, a power in her voice, carrying the beauty and resilience of her people within her heart.

For more information on Nikki Giovanni and her works, visit

https://nikki-giovanni.com/

DuEwa Frazier is a poet, children’s author, scholar, speaker, digital creator, consultant and podcast producer. Visit www.duewafrazier.com for more information.

Summer is nearly hear. In addition to looking forward to warm weather, I always think about reading. Books and summer go hand in hand. Beach reading is a must, but so is a lazy afternoon, sitting on the porch reading with a book in one hand and lemonade in the other. And reading promotes relaxation, so yeah get into.

Here are some terrific summer reads that you may not want to miss! Some are recent releases, others were released in 2024.

Joy Goddess: A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance by A'Lelia Bundles

Dubbed the “joy goddess of Harlem’s 1920s” by poet Langston Hughes, A’Lelia Walker, daughter of millionaire entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker and the author’s great-grandmother and namesake, is a fascinating figure whose legendary parties and Dark Tower salon helped define the Harlem Renaissance.

After inheriting her mother’s hair care enterprise, A’Lelia would become America’s first high profile black heiress and a prominent patron of the arts. Joy Goddess takes readers inside her three New York homes—a mansion, a townhouse, and a pied-a-terre—where she entertained Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Florence Mills, James Weldon Johnson, Carl Van Vechten, W.E.B. DuBois, and other cultural, social and intellectual luminaries of the Roaring Twenties.

Now, based on extensive research and Walker’s personal correspondence, her great-granddaughter creates a meticulous, nuanced portrait of a charismatic woman struggling to define herself as a wife, mother, and businesswoman outside her famous mother’s sphere.

Toni At Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship by Dana A. Williams

An insightful exploration that unveils the lesser-known dimensions of this legendary writer and her legacy, revealing the cultural icon’s profound impact as a visionary editor who helped define an important period in American publishing and literature.

A multifaceted genius, Toni Morrison transcended her role as an author, helping to shape an important period in American publishing and literature as an editor at one of the nation’s most prestigious publishing houses. While Toni Morrison's literary achievements are widely celebrated, her editorial work is little known. Drawing on extensive research and firsthand accounts, this comprehensive study discusses Morrison's remarkable journey from her early days at Random House to her emergence as one of its most important editors. During her tenure in editorial, Morrison refashioned the literary landscape, working with important authors, including Toni Cade Bambara, Leon Forrest, and Lucille Clifton, and empowering cultural icons such as Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali to tell their stories on their own terms.

Toni Morrison herself had great enthusiasm about Dana Williams's work on this story, generously sharing memories and thoughts with the author over the years, even giving her the book's title. From the manuscripts she molded, the authors she nurtured, and the readers she inspired, Toni at Random demonstrates how Toni Morrison has influenced American culture beyond the individual titles or authors she published. Morrison’s contribution as an editor transformed the broader literary landscape and deepened the cultural conversation. With unparalleled insight and sensitivity, Toni at Random charts this editorial odyssey.

Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray (Listen to DuEwa’s recent podcast interview with Victoria!)

In 1919, as civil and social unrest grips the country, there is a little corner of America, a place called Harlem where something special is stirring. Here, the New Negro is rising and Black pride is evident everywhere...in music, theatre, fashion and the arts. And there on stage in the center of this renaissance is Jessie Redmon Fauset, the new literary editor of the preeminent Negro magazine The Crisis.

First Born Girls by Bernice McFadden

On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near Detroit, only to be resuscitated after her mother pulled her from the flaming wreckage. Firstborn Girls traces her remarkable life from that moment up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar.

Growing up in 1980s Brooklyn, Bernice finds solace in books, summer trips to Barbados, and boarding school to escape her alcoholic father. Discovering the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she finally sees herself and her loved ones reflected in their stories of “messy, beautiful, joyful Black people.”

Interwoven with Bernice's personal journey is her family's history, beginning with her four-times enslaved great-grandmother Louisa Vicey Wilson in 1822 Hancock County, Georgia. Her descendants survived Reconstruction and Jim Crow, joined the Great Migration, and mourned Dr. King’s assassination during the Civil Rights Movement. These women's wisdom, secrets, and fierce love are passed down like Louisa's handmade quilt.

Florida Water: Poems by Aja Monet

In this vulnerable meditation, aja monet reflects on her migration to South Florida in search of love, connection, and belonging, unearthing the delicate balance between the poet, lover, and community organizer. These poems lay bare the tender dance of relationships, entwining the personal with the political, as they confront the state’s fractured history of racial prejudice, marooned peoples, and the unruly forces of nature.

Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me by Glory Edim

For Glory Edim, that “friend of my mind” is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty, eventually reaching a community of half a million readers. But her own love of books stretches far back.

Edim’s father moved back to Nigeria while she was still a child, marking the beginning of a series of traumatic changes and losses for her family. What became an escape, a safe space, and a second home for her and her brother was their local library. Books were where Edim found community, and as she grew older she discovered authors and ideas that she wasn’t being taught about in class. Reading wherever and whenever she could, be it in her dorm room or when traveling by subway or plane, she found the Black writers whose words would forever change her life: Nikki Giovanni, through children’s poetry cassettes; Maya Angelou, through a critical high school English teacher; Toni Morrison, while attending Morrison’s alma mater, Howard University; Audre Lorde, on a flight to Nigeria. In prose full of both joy and heartbreak, Edim recounts how these writers and so many others taught her how to value herself by helping her to find her own voice when her mother lost hers, to trust her feelings when her father remarried, and to create bonds with other Black women and uplift their stories.

We’re Alone by Edwidge Danticat

Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience.

From hurricanes to political violence, from her days as a new student at a Brooklyn elementary school knowing little English to her account of a shooting hoax at a Miami mall, Danticat has an extraordinary ability to move from the personal to the global and back again. Throughout, literature and art prove to be her reliable companions and guides in both tragedies and triumphs.

Danticat is an irresistible presence on the page: full of heart, outrage, humor, clear thinking, and moral questioning, while reminding us of the possibilities of community. And so “we’re alone” is both a fearsome admission and an intimate invitation―we’re alone now, we can talk.

Good Dirt: A Novel by Charmaine Wilkerson

When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well.

The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby's high profile romance falls apart without any explanation, that's exactly what they get.

So Ebby flees to France, only for her past to follow her there. And as she tries to process what's happened, she begins to think about the other loss her family suffered on that day eighteen years ago—the stoneware jar that had been in their family for generations, brought North by an enslaved ancestor. But little does she know that the handcrafted piece of pottery held more than just her family's history—it might also hold the key to unlocking her own future.

In this sweeping, evocative novel, Charmaine Wilkerson brings to life a multi-generational epic that examines how the past informs our present.

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Roberto Carlos Garcia is associate professor of English at Union College of Union County NJ. He writes poetry and prose about the Afro-Latinx and Afro-Diasporic experience. His work has been published widely in places like Poetry Magazine, NACLA, Poets & Writers, The Root, and others. Garcia is a 2023 New Jersey State Council of the Arts Poetry Fellow and the author of five books. Four poetry collections: Melancolía (Cervena Barva Press, 2016), black / Maybe: An Afro Lyric (Willow Books, 2018), [Elegies] (Flower Song Press, 2020), What Can I Tell You: Selected Poems (Flower Song Press, 2022), and one essay collection, Traveling Freely, (Curbstone Books / Northwestern University Press 2024). Garcia is the founder of Get Fresh Books Publishing, a literary nonprofit.

By now everyone knows that “Sinners” has grossed hundreds of millions at the box office. Ryan Coogler’s first original movie, as in written, directed, and produced by him, is a hit with movie goers. Especially those who haven’t returned to the movies in person, since pre-pandemic, because we’ve been enjoying all of the streaming services — Prime, Hulu, and Netflix in the comfort of our homes. Let me say, I enjoyed “Sinners,” but not because of Micheal B. Jordan, although he was good. And not even because of the cinematography — which was also good.

I enjoyed “Sinners” for what it posed about Black history, the legacy of Black music and cultural rites, African spiritual and cultural symbolism, what it says about love, and seeing a well-known poet of my generation who I had the pleasure of meeting at a Harlem book signing for his book Said the shotgun to the head — Saul Williams, who played the preacher “Jedidiah,” father to the young guitar player “Preacher Boy” Sammie Moore.

Black music is American music, from the African slaves’ hymns to the sound of rock and roll, jazz, and blues. The scene in “Sinners” when “Sammie” and “Delta Slim” (Delroy Lindo), and others played a musical medley that got the people dancing and swooning, and even appeared to catch the roof on fire, showed the power of Black music from past to present.

African Spirituality, Symbolism, and Theme of Protection

In the beginning of the movie, we are introduced to the twins — “Smoke” and “Stack,” played by Micheal B. Jordan. Having Micheal B. Jordan play two very gangster men, wearing stylish, beautiful suits, and presenting their full physical and verbal masculinity was a move Ryan Coogler made that I’m sure he knew would surprise and entertain the audience.

Twins in Yoruba culture and spirituality are known as ibeji. The ibeji are considered magical, divine, reincarnated ancestors. It is no coincidence that the personas of Smoke and Stack as powerful Black men, in this film, would present a symbol of this African spiritual belief.

In one scene, Smoke and Stack are taking the covering off of their truck which was hidden amongst the bushes and trees. A snake appears in the back of the truck, hissing. One of the twins quickly takes out his dagger, pierces the cobras head, and tosses it away in the bushes. In African spirituality, a snack can be symbol of protection, or it can be a sign that someone is cursed.

Was the snake a foreshadowing of what was to come? Was Stack in fact already cursed and the snake was a warning? Later in the film, we see that one of the twins is stricken and touched by evil in a clear way, in the form of encounters with a vampire, which became fatal.

The beautiful woman Annie played by Wunmi Mosaku, Smoke’s wife, wore gorgeous beads that resembled ilekes in the film. Annie is a hoodoo woman, herbalist, who works roots from natural elements found in the earth. She and Smoke had a baby who deceased. The baby was buried on the land where Annie kept her herbal store. Annie’s prayer and candle working was a part of the scene when Smoke returns to her. He talks of having missed her while he was in Chicago making money working for Capone. Annie gave her man a concerned look. He opened his suit jacket to show her that he was still wearing the mojo bag that she gave him a long time ago. It kept him safe through his travels. The theme of protection is heavy through this film, whether spiritual or physical protection. The scene also showed Annie seeking spiritual guidance. The items she worked with included bones which she threw on the table to gain answers. This is similar to African divination.

The Bluesman’s Hoodoo

The movie was a hoodoo tale from the bluesman’s experience. Sammie the young blues guitar player and Delta Slim, the harmonica player were the hoodoo men leading the people in praise dancing, joy, swooning, love, and lust in the film. There was something about that music that caused the spirits of ancestors to rise, and the hearts of lovers past and present to want to be close to one other. The music was a spirit unto itself as the people danced and partied into the night, the juke joint was in full swing, and the twins were the guardian spirits over the establishment. Delta Slim was old enough to live a long time, having been a bluesman who sits in the town earning a bit of money by playing his harmonica, the money he earns, he uses to buy his drink. He didn’t have much more planned for his life.

Can the bluesman save the people?

This is a question that came up in my thoughts when Stack, Sammie, and Delta Slim rode past the Black men working on the chain gang who were singing spiritual songs. Delta Slim called out to them to keep their heads up. Sammie grasped his guitar that much harder. Having left his father’s church a short time earlier, his father, preacher, Jedadiah gave Sammie a strong warning. It likely foreshadowed what was to come.

The Audacity of the Twins

There was a clear them vs. us theme threaded throughout the movie. When the tall white man who looked like a sheriff met the twins at the front of the warehouse, you were bracing yourself for a terrible encounter based on racism, because after all this was supposed to be 1932 in Mississippi, a time when few Blacks moved around without racial harassment. And here the twins are coming to Mississippi from Chicago, looking sharp and full of confident swagger in the face of a white man with power in the town. The twins didn’t bite their tongues. They demanded respect as they handed the man a bag that appeared to have more than enough money to buy the warehouse. The juke joint was born from this deal.

Later the twins enlist the help of a Chinese-American couple — “Grace Chow” and “Bo Chow” played by Li Jun Li and Yao, at the general store in town, to create a sign for them, and enough food and drink for most of the towns people to come by the juke joint to eat, drink, and dance later that night.

The twins wanted to create something special for old friends, hardworking Black folks in the town. But Stack didn’t count on his white-passing ex-girlfriend, Mary to show up and want to be with him. She crashed the party at the juke joint but it was accepted because like Annie said, Mary was “family”. But Stack didn’t claim her as his family. He previously urged her to marry a white man and settle down, to keep her “protected.” In my opinion he was really protecting himself.

Mary was not white, but she appeared to be white. The symbolism that is shown when Mary later became the downfall of Stack in the film, once she turned into a vampire, was very clear. During Jim Crow times, a Black man was not to be seen socializing or flirting with a white woman. It’s the kind of thing that could get a Black man killed. Just the accusation is enough. This is what led to the murder of young Emmit Till, who like Stack and Smoke, had traveled down South from Chicago to visit family, when he was accused of speaking inappropriately to a white woman.

Dark vs. Light — Native Americans Gave One Warning

Could Ryan Coogler have been alluding to Black history and what happened to Till by showing the very gruesome happening of Mary biting into Stack as she was overtaken by her vampire lust? If we turn to popular culture, in just this past year, Katt Williams on a podcast episode with Shannon Sharpe stated that he stayed away from dating or flirting with white woman because, “You could be Kang the Conqueror and they can take yo’ …. down in two weekends…”

In the film “Sinners”, Mary took Stack down in less than two — hours, to the horror of his brother and all of the other juke joint attendees. But what created such a violent outburst in the first place? And did Stack’s unfortunate encounter speak to that old though that when it comes to a horror film, a Black person is always the first to go?

Early in the film, we see an unfortunate looking white man running and screaming for help. He looks a mess. It’s close to sundown and his skin is smoking. He appeared to have been set on fire. He approaches a home banging on the door loudly. A white couple answers, they have guns to protect themselves. The man begs and pleads with the couple to let him in, he says he had been tortured by Native Americans and was trying to get away from them. They look at him, wary but choose to let him in. A short time later a group of Native American people ride up to the house on horses. The woman opens to door, pointing a gun at them. They tell her that she’s in danger and that if she’s hiding the man, that they are seeking him. He tells her, “He’s not what he appears to be.” Welp next thing you know she goes back into the house and finds her husband has been slayed — by the man they opened their home to. And now they are both snarling vampires and she’s about to become one too.

I loved how Ryan Coogler gave Native Americans shine in this film. The original inhabitants of the land we know as America, unjustly displaced and marginalized throughout history, yet they were always keepers of the land and taught Europeans farming and how to survive. Seeing that they gave this white couple a warning, they were really trying to help! But no one wanted to listen to them. Sounds familiar.

Later that night, when the three vampires go on the hunt, they come to the juke joint. Oh, the joint is jumping now, and everyone is having a good time. But when the three vampires who are cleaned up now, and no longer look like hungry vampires approach the juke joint, the twins and Delta Slim won’t let them in. Apparently, vampires have to be invited into your space, they cannot cross the threshold unless you invite them in.

The rest of the night was a night of sheer madness, gore, and mayhem as one by one anytime someone left the juke joint to go outside of the establishment for anything — they were bitten which begins their fatal transition into becoming a vampire for life.

Black [Blues] Musicians Fight to Keep Soul / Music

Sammie didn’t want to give up, his music, his soul, or his new woman Pearlie. Well, he lost the fight in protecting “Pearlie” played by Jayme Lawson. There’s the theme of protection again. She was a married woman anyway, so he wasn’t going to be able to keep her (LOL). The lead vampire Remmick, played by Jack O’ Connell kept telling Sammie and the other musicians and attendees at the juke joint that he wanted to join with their music, and play music. Remmick was so creepy. He had an English accent and looked like he had landed in this Mississippi time and space, from a hundred years past. Time travel. He was ghoulish, beat up, and malnourished looking. Ryan Coogler knew exactly what he was doing with this characterization.

Remmick wanted to capture the blues music and end it’s influence. He wanted the bluesman’s soul and the power that Black music held to move peoples’ minds and spirits. This makes me think about Black musicians in the past, fighting to own their music rights and fighting for the respect that they are due. Micheal Jackson, Prince, and many others fought for their music rights. Also, the Black musician's journey and impact on other music forms despite not always gaining the recognition deserved for impacting other music styles. Such as Chuck Berry and Little Richard being the founders of rock, but not always receiving due credit.

Everlasting Love and Belief in Joining the Ancestors

According to Annie in the film, the vampire cannot join their ancestors later in the afterlife, they are bound to a life roaming the earth seeking their next victims, never to grow old or ascend spiritually. By the end Annie made sure to tell Smoke that if they come for her and succeed in biting her, that he should drive a stack through her heart so that she can be with her ancestors. Smoke couldn’t save his brother Stack, and he couldn’t save his love, Annie, but he fought to the end and his goal was to become an ancestor not a haint. Smoke finally fought the demons that came for him both in human form and vampire form. Having been shot in the fight he knew it wouldn’t be long. He was united with his wife, Annie, and their baby in the spirit realm.

A Just Ending

And the young blues guitar player, limped on home to his father’s church, bruised, burned, beaten, and scared. He now had a story to tell that no one would believe. Returning to his father, Jedadiah’s church meant returning to the light. If I apply this story to Joseph Campbell’s the Hero’s Journey, I’d say that both Stack and Sammie are heroes, but I think that Sammie more classically would be hero because he was unlikely to be one.

Sammie finally put an end to the lead vampire, even while the vampire taunted him and sung his ghoulish songs. I could tell that Sammie was scared as they fought in the river. The vampire kept pushing Sammie under the water, but Sammie fought back harder each time. But the ancestors were on his side. In African spiritual belief, water and rivers are a symbol of purity, birth, rebirth, and in Christianity it is also a symbol of purity and rebirth during baptism and for holy water.

Sammie was a young, innocent naive preacher’s son, who lost his innocence all on the count of fooling around with the twins in the juke joint, and a married woman named Pearlie. Sammie returned to his father, and the welcome embrace of his father’s church. Smoke returned to his Annie and their baby. You could say those who escaped being turned into vampires, returned to God’s grace no matter what sins they fell to. Maybe that is what everlasting love truly is. They may have all been sinners but at least they weren’t doomed to a life of grotesque vampire hell!

DuEwa Frazier is a poet, digital storyteller, speaker, podcaster, author, scholar, editor, and consultant. Visit www.duewafrazier.com for more information.

Salute to all of the poets whose legacies in poetry and community service, remind us of the impact and influence of Black poets in education and cultural arts. Creative writing may not be a required academic subject in most public schools, but as a former public-school teacher and teaching artist in various schools, I have witnessed the power that poetry and writing holds when students are able to express their thoughts and write poems to share with others. There are a number of poets whose brilliant writing has merged with their practice as educators and mentors.

My reflection begins with the late and notable Black poet, June Jordan. An essayist, poet, and playwright, June Jordan’s writings discussed topics ranging from racial inequality to identity, to family and politics. Her books include Some Changes (1971), Living Room (1985) and Kissing God Goodbye: Poems 1991-1997 (1997). Born in 1936 in Harlem, June Jordan was a professor at UC Berkely, and founded Poetry for the People, a poetry program in the Bay area created to educate the masses and inspire youth and adults through poetry arts. Poetry for the People program principles:

1. That students will not take themselves seriously unless we who teach them, honor and respect them in every practical way that we can.

2. That words can change the world and save our lives.

3. That poetry is the highest art and the most exacting service devoted to our most serious, and our most imaginative, deployment of verbs and nouns on behalf of whatever and whoever we cherish.

Poetry for the People is still offered today, with a focus on reading, writing, and poetry, to bridge the gap between the university and the larger community.

Leading poet, award winning author, publisher, editor, keynote, and professor, Dr. Haki R. Madhubuti, legendary founder of Third World Press in Chicago (now Third World Press Foundation), Distinguished University Professor, iconic member of the Black Arts Movement, and author of over 36 books, has taught at esteemed universities and given lectures at many institutions, arts venues, and conferences. Dr. Madhubuti’s 1991 book, Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous? The African American Family in Transition (1991), sold more than 100,000 copies. Dr. Madhubuti is a founder of the Institute of Positive Education/New Concept School (1969), and a cofounder of Betty Shabazz International Charter School (1998), Barbara A. Sizemore Middle School (2005), and DuSable Leadership Academy (2005), all of which are in Chicago. Dr. Madhubuti has mentored many Black poets seeking publishing, higher education, and careers. He founded the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago State University, which produces the annual Gwendolyn Brooks Black Writers’ Conference.

Philadelphia’s first Poet Laureate, Dr. Sonia Sanchez, began as an educator in NYC teaching 5th grade students at Downtown Community School. Dr. Sanchez has taught and lectured at over 500 colleges and universities in the United States. She held the Laura Carnell Chair in English, is a Professor Emeritus, and the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University. Dr. Sanchez has taught at San Francisco State University, Howard University, City College of New York, Amherst College, Spelman College, and the University of Pittsburgh. Some of Dr. Sanchez’s award winning and notable books of poetry include Homecoming (1969), We a BaddDDD People (1970), Love Poems (1973), I've Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems (1978), A Sound Investment (1980), Homegirls and Handgrenades (1984),

Under a Soprano Sky (1987), Wounded in the House of a Friend (1995), and Does Your House Have Lions? (1997). Dr. Sanchez autographed her book, Morning Haiku (2010) for me at her book talk and signing, at Hue Man Bookstore in Harlem. I had the privilege of producing and hosting a tribute poetry reading for her, at The Harlem Book Fair in July 2010. I can remember sitting in an audience at Harlem State in Harlem listening to Dr. Sanchez talk about how she often unpacked vernacular language including and curse words to get students to understand the impact of the words they use, and how to be artful in their choice of words. It was amazing. Dr. Sanchez showed that poets as teachers, can effectively teach how students can uplift themselves and those around them with the power of language and word choice.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith, is the author of several award-winning works: New and Selected Poems (2021); Wade in the Water (2018); Ordinary Light (2015); Life on Mars (2011); Duende (2007); The Body's Question (2003). She has taught at Princeton University and is currently Professor of English and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University and Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. I will never forget the Cave Canem Regional Poetry Workshop that I took with Tracy K. Smith years ago in New York City. In this workshop with Smith, I read wonderful poems by Aracelis Girmay, Naomi Shihab Nye and other poets. I learned about the ghazal poem format in Smith’s workshop. Having the opportunity to take a poetry workshop with a master poet who would years down the line become U.S. Poet Laureate is an experience I will never forget because I was also able to learn new strategies for teaching.

DuEwa Frazier is the founder/digital creator of Nerdacity, a writer, poet, children’s author, speaker, educator, publisher, and editor, her work can be found at www.duewafrazier.com.

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Bio

Nina Angela is a cultural worker and multidisciplinary artist living in Washington, D.C.

Nina’s writing is published in The Killens Review of Arts & Letters; Black Renaissance Noire; Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre, and Performance; A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine Online; Break Beat Poets Vol 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Press); Are You Entertained? Black Popular Culture in the 21st Century (Duke University Press); Performance Research Journal (Taylor and Francis); Represent! New Plays for Multicultural Young People (Bloomsbury Press); So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth (Haymarket Press); Black Ecologies Zine (Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice); and tBTR: A Journal of the Black Theatre Network. She is excited about her first collection of writing for performance, The Double: A Choreodrama and a Choreopoem (Kavaya Press).

Nina’s choreodramas, choreopoems, and plays include GUTTA BEAUTIFUL(The Warehouse Theatre, The Woolly Mammoth for DC’s Fringe, Abrons Arts Center/Henry Street Settlement, & Little Carib Theatre in Trinidad); ITAGUA MEJI: A Road & A Prayer (Brecht Forum, Alternate Roots, Rutgers University Newark and New Brunswick, The Nuyorican Poets Café); GYPSY & THE BULLY DOOR (The Warehouse Theatre, the former Dumbo Sky); ELIJAHEEN BECOMES WIND (Anacostia Arts Center); CHARISMA AT THE CROSSROADS (Dorothy Young Arts Center); SPARROW(The Langston Hughes House); and A COMPULSION FOR BREATHING (The Schomburg Center and Target Margin Theater).

Nina has taught across disciplines at American University, Howard University, Medgar Evers College, Brooklyn College, Drew University, and for the Beyond Identity Program at City College. She is also co-founder and executive director of Ocean Ana Rising, Inc. (OAR) which has been generously funded with grants from the NEA, The Black Seed, and DC’s Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Nina holds a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY). She also holds a Master of Philosophy from The Graduate Center at CUNY, a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing - Fiction from American University, and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Howard University.

Nina is a mother to two adult daughters who keep her mindful with an ear for new music and language.

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E.J. Antonio received fellowships in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, and the Cave Canem Foundation. She’s appeared as a featured reader and performer at venues in the NY tri-state area, including Arts Westchester; the Stone; the Hobart Festival of Women Writers, The Vision Festival, Langston Hughes House, the Blue Door Art Gallery, the Untermyer Park Arts Center, and the David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center at the Pocantico Center. Her work has been published in various journals, magazines, and anthologies, including: the Encyclopedia Project, African Voices Literary Magazine, Black Renaissance Noire, The Mom Egg, Killens Review of Arts & Letters, Taint Taint Taint Magazine, About Place Journal, and arriving at a shoreline an anthology . E.J. is the author of two chapbooks, Every Child Knows (Premier Poets Chapbook Series 2007) and Solstice (Red Glass Books, 2013), and a solo jazz poetry cd Rituals in the marrow: Recipe for a jam session. E.J. is a founding Board Member of the non-profit Arts organization One Breath Rising, and a founding member of the improvisation group, The Jazz & Poetry Choir Collective, which released its debut cd We Were Here in April 2020.

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M. Nzadi Keita is a first-generation urban northerner. Her first book of poems, Birthmarks, was published by Nightshade Press. Her work has since appeared on public television, and in anthologies including Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Beyond the Frontier: African-American Poetry in the 21st Century, and A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. Her poems appear in MELUS, Poet Lore, and Crab Orchard, among other journals. Grants and fellowships from Yaddo, Fine Arts Work Center, Leeway Foundation, and the Pew Center for Arts and Humanities have supported her writing and community-based arts adventures.  

Keita served as an adviser to the documentary, “BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez.” Her essays on Sanchez appear in Impossible to Hold: Women and Culture in The 1960s and the anthology, Peace Is A Haiku Song (Mural Arts Press).  

 She has collaborated with the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, WHYY-TV/ Philadelphia, the Rosenbach Museum, Moonstone Arts Center, Germantown Arts Roundtable, and other initiatives. Keita is a Cave Canem alum and a professor of creative writing and literature at Ursinus College.

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Bio ⁠Courtney Thorsson⁠ is an associate professor at the University of Oregon, where she teaches, studies, and writes about African American literature. Her first book ⁠Women’s Work: Nationalism and Contemporary African American Women's Novels⁠ argues that Toni Cade Bambara, Paule Marshall, Gloria Naylor, Ntozake Shange, and Toni Morrison reclaim and revise cultural nationalism in their novels of the 1980s and 90s. Her writing has appeared in publications including Callaloo; African American Review; MELUS; Gastronomica; Contemporary Literature; Legacy; and Public Books. Her new book, ⁠The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture⁠ tells the story of how a remarkable community of Black women writers and intellectuals transformed political, literary, and academic cultures. She is the recipient of a Public Scholars Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of the research and writing of The Sisterhood.  

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BIO Poet, storyteller, and essayist Roberto Carlos Garcia is a self-described “sancocho […] of provisions from the Harlem Renaissance, the Spanish Poets of 1929, the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyorican School, and the Modernists.” Garcia is rigorously interrogative of himself and the world around him, conveying “nakedness of emotion, intent, and experience,” and he writes extensively about the Afro-Latinx and Afro-diasporic experience. Roberto's third collection, [Elegies], is published by Flower Song Press and his second poetry collection, black / Maybe: An Afro Lyric, is available from Willow Books.  Roberto’s first collection, Melancolía, is available from Červená Barva Press. 
His poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY Magazine, The BreakBeat Poets Vol 4: LatiNEXT, Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3, The Root, Those People, Rigorous, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Gawker, Barrelhouse, The Acentos Review, Lunch Ticket, and many others.
He is founder of the cooperative press Get Fresh Books Publishing, A NonProfit Corp.
A native New Yorker, Roberto holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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BIO Ellen Hagan is a writer, performer, and educator. Her books include: Don’t Call Me a Hurricane, Blooming Fiascoes, Hemisphere,Crowned, Watch Us Rise (co-written with Renée Watson) and Reckless, Glorious, Girl. Her work can be found in ESPN Magazine, She Walks in Beauty, and Southern Sin. She received a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in poetry in 2020 and has received grants from the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. www.ellenhagan.com