[Conversation Issue] ‘Poetry refuses the abstraction of theory’—danai mupotsa in conversation with Makhosazana Xaba
This is the fifth in a series of long-form interviews by Patron Makhosazana Xaba to be hosted on The JRB,…
Tag: Blackness
[Conversation Issue] The world ends several times for Black people—A conversation with Uhuru Portia Phalafala and critical reading of her book Mine Mine Mine
Kim M Reynolds considers the historical and the personal in Uhuru Portia Phalafala’s new book Mine Mine Mine, in discussion…
‘Riotous Deathscapes charts a course of black life in vast deathscapes. It is a portrait of life among the dead’—an excerpt from Hugo ka Canham’s new book
The JRB presents an excerpt from Hugo ka Canham’s forthcoming book Riotous Deathscapes, to be published mid-May. Riotous DeathscapesHugo ka…
Kei Miller ‘alchemises the personal experience of Blackness into something deeply transportive’—Wamuwi Mbao reviews the award-winning Things I Have Withheld
Kei Miller’s collection of essays Things I Have Withheld takes the measure of what it means to read and be…
‘Your story told by someone else might in the end be richer’—Wamuwi Mbao reviews Culture and Liberation, the first dedicated collection of Alex La Guma’s exile writing
Culture and Liberation: Exile Writings, 1966–1985Alex La GumaEdited by Christopher J LeeSeagull Books 1966 was an interesting year. Future Trump…
‘A compellingly affecting hero figure for the remaking of the human’—Wamuwi Mbao reviews Sorrowland, the new novel by Rivers Solomon
Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland rearranges the furniture of the hardening genre of novels resolved to deal with North America’s history of…
‘To photograph Switzerland is to rephotograph it’—Sindi-Leigh McBride reviews Fernweh, Teju Cole’s latest photobook
Fernweh, Teju Cole’s latest photobook, feels like a palliative moment amid the uncertainty, loss and raw grief of the pandemic,…
View an excerpt from African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other, including work by Zanele Muholi, Hélène A Amouzou and Wilfred Ukpong
The JRB presents an excerpt from African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other. African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the OtherFotofestSchilt…
‘What does it do to you to be the subject of someone else’s imaginative impoverishment?’—Wamuwi Mbao reviews Claudia Rankine’s new book Just Us
Claudia Rankine’s Just Us is perhaps the most profound meditation on race and violence to emerge in the first two…
Of fear and motherly love—Rofhiwa Maneta reviews Imani Perry’s memoir Breathe: A Letter to My Sons
Imani Perry’s Breathe is a memoir committed to the radical hope that sees Black boys as more than problems to…
Read ‘Black children and white dolls’ by Kopano Ratele, excerpted from his book The World Looks Like This From Here: Thoughts on African Psychology
The JRB presents an excerpt from The World Looks Like This From Here: Thoughts on African Psychology, by psychologist and…
Discovering a Nervous Condition—an essay by Pwaangulongii Dauod on the geometry of darkness
The JRB presents new narrative non-fiction by Pwaangulongii Dauod. In December of 2014, barely one week after the department reluctantly…
Bucking against the inevitability of her martyrdom—The Negressity of Black womenhood and The Ones With Purpose
Mbali Sikakana considers Nozizwe Cynthia Jele’s new novel The Ones With Purpose in the context of Hilton Als’s groundbreaking 1996…
‘Being in South Africa as an author has shifted my perspective’—Zinzi Clemmons chats to The JRB about her debut novel, What We Lose
Zinzi Clemmons was in South Africa recently on a book tour for her debut novel, What We Lose. She sat…
Africanism and Afrofuturism: Imraan Coovadia considers Blackness, Black Panther and Achille Mbembe’s Critique of Black Reason
Achille Mbembe’s vision is a guide to the revolution that stands on the other side of revolution, writes Imraan Coovadia. Critique…