Carl Van Vechten, Van Vechten Trust. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
This article is reprinted from Feb. 13, 2015.
W.E.B. Du Bois’s magisterial book The Souls of Black Folk (1907) has left one particularly clear imprint on American conversations: its description, in the opening chapter “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” of African Americans’ “double consciousness,” their sense of being both within and without American identity, insiders yet outsiders to this national community. Yet in his closing chapter “The Sorrow Songs,” Du Bois frames that relationship quite differently, and in a way that shows Black History Month in a new and important light.
Ben Railton
Ben Railton is Professor of English Studies and Coordinator of American Studies at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts. He is the author of five previous books, most recently We the People: The 500-Year Battle over Who is American.
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Opinion
Leominster Champion
FITCHBURG Fitchburg State University’s Community Read, which brings the campus and wider community together for discussions and explorations of a shared text, this year delves into Robert MacFarlane’s acclaimed non-fiction book “Underland: A Deep Time Journey.”
MacFarlane takes readers through caverns and cisterns, root systems and glaciers, tombs and mines, opening our sense of wonder while also revealing the damage we have done and are doing to the heart and lungs of our planet. He weaves together poetry and geology, science and mythology, as he mines the earth and explores mysteries we usually assign to the stars.