Posts by: erh20

“it’s on”

June 23, 2011 at 6:33 am

i love this passage by june jordan. there is energy, struggle, and enthusiasm for the struggle: “My life seems to be an increasing revelation of the intimate face of universal struggle. You begin with your family and the kids on the block, and next you open your eyes to what you call your people, and […]

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anita hill: the vocabulary of art, the vocabulary of legality

June 23, 2011 at 6:14 am

i left class early last week to hear anita hill speak at a fundraiser for the ywca. she was quite impressive. she said a bunch of powerful things, but what was most striking was her reference to the breakdown of complaints filed to the eoc last year: 17 percent of the sexual misconduct allegations were filed […]

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nikki lee: performance is identity and identity is performance

June 15, 2011 at 8:02 am

if you all don’t know nikki lee, you should: she’s a korean american photographer who assimilates into various ethnic/cultural world. to say she poses as members of these communities is to miss her point entirely. lee becomes part of these communities. identity is performance and performance is identity, whether she is punk, yuppie, gansta, stripper, […]

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miscellany: nadine gordimer, death, writers with writers or writers with accountants?

June 15, 2011 at 7:46 am

“The best way to write is to do so as if one were already dead, afraid of no one’s reactions, answerable to no one’s views.” ~ nadine gordimer i love this quote — i love how gordimer describes writing as the most extreme of acts. on an entirely different note: i wonder what you guys […]

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Suzan Lori Parks: Miss Biography, You Win Tonight.

June 13, 2011 at 11:17 pm

Tonight I read an old profile of Suzan Lori Parks by Hilton Als in the New Yorker. I hadn’t read it since the original publication, way back in 2006. (But I do have a vivid recollection of the photo spread: Parks, with serious platforms and a toothy grin, wraps one leg around Mos Def.) The […]

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on craft: exploitation, privacy, invasion, philip roth & carrie mae weems

June 8, 2011 at 4:33 pm

a few lines, posted to my bedroom wall and now to your computer screen — “The serious, merciless invasion of privacy is at the heart of the fiction we value most highly.” philip roth “How you get work done is by exploiting yourself and your feelings, and sometimes people get in the way.” carrie mae weems philip roth’s quote suggests, to […]

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on marnie weber

May 31, 2011 at 7:57 pm

marnie weber is an artist i encountered a few months ago, roving the internet late one night… the gifts were immense and immediate. weber is an artist in the broadest of senses: she is a singer, a performance artist, a video-gal, a photographer… she uses multiple media to address the singular concern — principally, how […]

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“sometimes a writer’s failures are the most distinct part of them.”

May 31, 2011 at 7:18 pm

i read interviews obsessively, with the gusto of a hungry child. the latest & greatest is zadie smith in harper’s from way back in february of 2011 — that blustery month i would have loved to pass over… what strikes me most about smith’s approach to criticism is how she is at once generous and […]

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