Wanda's Picks Radio Show Special: Libations for Toni Morrison

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

Toni Morrison said: “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” Language is how we write meaning into a 21st century African presence where without documented proof Black people are said to not only have no valuable contribution, we are disappeared as if we never existed. Morrison was a major architect in a building or edifice that cherishes African American literary voices. This edifice overflows like a river swimming against gravity, its triumphant hallelujah echoing across the landscape. Ashay! Ashay! Ashayo!

1. Kim McMillon will officially earn her doctorate in Interdisciplinary Humanities this summer at the University of California, Merced.  Ms. McMillon produced the Dillard University-Harvard’s Hutchins Center Black Arts Movement Conference in September 2016.  In collaboration with UC Merced’s Office of Student Life and Center for the Humanities, Ms. McMillon produced the UC Merced Black Arts Movement Conference 50 Years On, February 28 - March 2, 2014.  Ms. McMillon edited the April 2018 special edition of The Journal of PAN African Studies on the Black Arts Movement and has contributed to the Black Power Encyclopedia (1965-1975), a two-volume reference work that explores the emergence and evolution of the Black Power Movement in the United States.  From 2001–2005, Ms. McMillon produced the Oakland Literature Expo with PEN Oakland as part of the City of Oakland’s Art & Soul Festival. Ms. McMillon’s radio show Arts in the Valley  (2010-2014) aired every Saturday on 1480 KYOS AM in Merced, California.

2. Joyce A. Joyce, Ph.D, Chairperson of the Department of English from 2012 to 2015 at Temple University and a 1995 recipient of an American Book Award for Literary Criticism for the collection of essays Warriors, Conjurers, and Priests: Defining African-American Literary Criticism, Joyce earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Georgia in 1979.

She has published articles on Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Arthur P. Davis, Toni Cade Bambara, Ishmael Reed, E. Ethelbert Miller, Askia Touré, Gil Scott-Heron, and Sonia Sanchez. Her current project is titled “Black Literary Essays: The Kaleidoscopic Imagination.” Her papers are housed in special collections at the Odum Library, Valdosta State University.

3. devorah major joins us.

Thanks to all who called in for this Libation to Toni Morrison. We close with Shamarr Allen, "I Love You." He is at SJ Jazz Summerfest which begins this evening, Aug. 9, 2019; Sunday afternoon, Aug. 11, summerfest.sanjosejazz.org

Clips with Toni Morrison taken from: Toni Morrison: Pieces that I Am; Charlie Rose Interview (1988); Toni Morrison and Angela Davis on Connecting for Progress at the NY Library: Podcast #97 by Tracy O'Neill, Feb. 2, 2016, Nikki Giovanni, Shear Good Fortune at Virginia Tech.

Show link: http://tobtr.com/11456013