Page 54 - Native Son News Today

Library of Congress. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection Few authors have had the distinction of having their upcoming book being dubbed one of the most anticipated releases of the year—and maybe only one has earned that type of accolade six decades after their death. But American writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston’s literary legacy is a class apart. Initially celebrated, later vilified, and posthumously canonized as “the patron saint of Black women writers,” her work has ins...

Mixed Messages Filmmaker Rhea Storr, who won the 2020 Aesthetica Art Prize, uses the concept of carnival to evoke the contrasts and conflicts bound up within one version of modern British-Caribbean identity. “It is really quite impossible to be affirmative about anything which one refuses to question.” This quote, from James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, serves as a kind of epigram to Rhea Storr’s 2017 film Junkanoo Talk. Suitably enough, it epitomises the mixture of af...

When time stands still and all around you shudders to a halt, we seek inspiration beyond our reality and find refuge in the magic of film. Taking us up into its arms and away into its dreams, film will forever be our saviour. Showing us the light that bursts forth from beyond the storm, film shelters all its children in its warmth and wonder and promise of other worlds. In film, we trust. And so we take this opportunity to reclaim moments of a broken year and celebrate the films from 2020 that...

Native Son ferry service recently launched a new weekend run between St. Thomas and St. Croix. The service operates on Friday and Sunday, leaving the Blyden Terminal in Charlotte Amalie at 8 a.m. and noon, respectively, and arriving in Gallows Bay, St. Croix, within two hours. The ferry departs St. Croix on Friday and Sunday at 4 p.m. This week’s departures from St. Thomas will be Thursday and Sunday as part of a holiday schedule. The normal schedule will resume next week. Native Son spoke...

The Best Title Sequences of 2020  It’s been a year like no other. A year when so many of us turned to screens to connect or, indeed, to disconnect; when we ached for a dollop of entertainment, a moment of escape or a dose of comfort, for something familiar or something completely new.  This year, for Art of the Title’s seventh annual list of the year’s top 10 title sequences, we’re doing something new. We reached out to our community to pull in new voices and to expand the team that c...

The Pull of Communist Culture The Pull of Politics: Steinbeck, Wright, Hemingway, and the Left in the Late 1930s. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2018, vii – 373 pp. $50 Hardcover In this quite readable and accessible study, Milton Cohen describes Communist Party efforts to establish relationships with three major American writers of the 1930s – John Steinbeck, Richard Wright, and Ernest Hemingway. Of the three, only Richard Wright became a regular, though conflicted, Party member....

“Come on, I’ll show you the way.” A tall, unassuming man with a gray beard and a kind smile sits behind a gnarled tardigrade desk that looks like a massive cutting from, as he calls it, The World Tree. In front of him is a television camera and a crew of hurried people wearing headphones and dressed in black. Behind him, crowding the frame of the camera, are bookcases. One of those books is about to fly into his hand, and th...

Normal text size Very large text size What a year. Who would have thought this time last year that 2020 would bring a pandemic? And what did it mean for books? Well, publishing schedules went a bit haywire as titles were postponed, trumpeted or slipped under the radar. It was possibly the worst time to be a debut author, with launches taking on a new identity. Writers festivals and bookshop events were cancelled or migrated online. But didnt we readers respond well? We took to virtual events in...

Her missing children. authorities now say her husband is under arrest and that they have found human remains on the property. and good evening tonight from houston, where we witnessed today a moving service for george floyd, a native son, a high school football star from the third ward here. a father. they said he was not a perfect man, but that he must have been chosen for this moment. heartbroken to have lost him, the family, the friends, the loved ones gathered here today now believe his na...

Presidents day. california leads 16 states in a lawsuit over the presidents national declaration is the latest. the state has filed 45 lawsuits in a wide range. trump has threatened to cancel californias $929 million project. kamala harris writes, the state has the fifth largest economy so prerogative policies are working. harris strategy to win the nomination relies on her state. she will hold a rally on super tuesday. if senator harris comes out on top there, it could mount a fatal blow to her...