The Black Interior: Essays

by Elizabeth Alexander

With a poet's precision and an intellectually adventurous spirit, Elizabeth Alexander explores a wide spectrum of contemporary African American artistic life through literature, paintings, popular media, and films, and discusses its place in current culture. In The Black Interior, she examines the vital roles of such heavyweight literary figures as Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, and Rita Dove, as well as lesser known, yet vibrant, new creative voices. She offers a reconsideration of "afro-outré" painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, the concept of "race-pride" in Jet magazine, and her take on Denzel Washington's career as a complex black male icon in a post-affirmative action era. Also available is Alexander's much heralded essay on Rodney King, Emmett Till, and the collective memory of racial violence.

Alexander, who has been a professor at the University of Chicago and Smith College, and recently at Yale University, has taught and lectured on African American art and culture across the country and abroad for nearly two decades. In The Black Interior, she directs her scrupulous poet's eye to the urgent cultural issues of the day. This lively collection is a crucial volume for understanding current thinking on race, art, and culture in America.

Genres: Nonfiction, Poetry, Essays, Race, Art, Literary Criticism, Criticism

221 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Elizabeth Alexander is a Quantrell Award-winning American poet, essayist, playwright, university professor, and scholar of African-American literature and culture. She teaches English language/literature, African-American literature, and gender studies at Yale University. Alexander was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard during the 2007-08 academic year.

Alexander's poems, short stories, and critical writings have been widely published in such journals and periodicals as The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Village Voice, The Women's Review of Books, and The Washington Post. Her play Diva Studies, which was performed at Yale's School of Drama, garnered her a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship as well as an Illinois Arts Council award.

On December 17th, 2008 it was announced that she will compose a poem which she shall recite at the Presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama in January 2009.

Reviews

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reminded me of all my favorite parts of being in academic settings. In The Black Interior, Elizabeth Alexander thoroughly examines several forms of Black art over the years and her deliberate analysis of each left me wanting to go back and read more on them when I finished. From Gwendolyn Brooks to Jet Magazine and Langston Hughes to Denzel Washington, she takes care to look at why each work, figure, or combination of the two is fascinating in its own right. I enjoyed some of the essays more than others (as is to be expected), but I finished each grateful to experience Alexander's thoughts on the subject at hand.

[Sarita · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book although written in 2004 is relevant today! Elizabeth's prose and poetry gift is evident throughout this book. She cites actual life events including my favorite the "Can You Be BLACK and Look at This?" which is eerily similar to the George Floyd murder. I was blown away. Using poets, art, films to illustrate the range and power of the African American culture. I love everything Elizabeth pens. Please add this to your necessary and important book for your personal library.

[Irene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as poetic as I would've hoped for Elizabeth Alexander, but a solid read. Preferred the essays at the beginning.

[Courtney Ferriter · Rating 3 out of 5]

** 3.5 stars **

[Matthew Molinaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is gripping literary and aesthetic criticism! take note english professors!

[Tiffany Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each essay expands ideas of Black identity and place in America, pointing to old age and new age artists of the times. Very great read with some powerful open-ended questions that I'll be pondering for a while.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

See my full review here: http://isak.typepad.com/isak/2011/03/...

Poet Elizabeth Alexander situates her first collection of essays, The Black Interior (Graywolf Press) at the question of what the creative inner lives of African-American people looks like, separate from the overlay of stereotypes, presumption, and "limited imagination." It is a broad topic, the kind of question that spills liquidly over the edge of the table; I entered the inner life of this book with skepticism (and intrigue) about whether it could be tackled here with any real substance.

Alexander draws generously from the galaxies of visual arts, literature, music, film, history, and media (as well as her mother's living room) to present a textured picture of how this collective interior that she maps out presents itself, even pushes itself, into the public sphere. And maps is the correct word -- rather than make an argument for what "the black interior" is, she rather elevates it, displays it, juxtaposes it with counterpart representations, and generally calls attention to this universe.

There is a lot to mine here, and Alexander's thoughtful writing is matched by her honest and risk-taking narration; she is willing to try out ideas that might seem overly broad or metaphorical for the sake of exploration. She isn't particularly motivated by coming to conclusions, though she has an intelligent eye for art and literary criticism. The rather academic tone of her essays (Alexander doubles as chair of Yale University's African-American Studies department) is relieved by her personal voice and stories that seem, indeed, essential for a book on the "black interior."

Alexander is convincing and engaging as someone who is powerfully curious about the world, interior or otherwise. Her enthusiasm and attention to art and history is a heady brew. While at times her essays feel flat or underwhelming in terms of presenting revelatory ideas -- the temperature is often on simmer -- this book serves as a crossroads-post: pointing the reader in multiple compelling directions for further artistic investigations and inspirations.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literary criticism, art criticism, these are not genres that usually inspire hyperbole. The language is almost always that of academia. But Alexander has drawn out the themes and ideas from both well known and little known black artists, primarily writers, that are both stridently part of the Black American (African American) culture and yet cross over often into universality. She quotes Langston Hughes in one essay, just for example, that "poets are lyric historians" and extrapolates from there.

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

the book was a kind of interesting cultural/aesthetic/political survey, but I have significant problems with the essentialist concepts that inform Alexander's work. She has this technique of simultaneously disavowing essentialism in publications like Jet magazine, and using an essentialist rhetoric of "black experience," "black reactions," "black lifestyles," and claiming a fundamental difference between white reactions and black reactions to something like Rodney King--Alexander claims a certain quality of affect and identification for blacks that white people have no access to.

[Jane Alberdeston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book especially useful/helpful in my coursework and for my students. The essay on poet Gwendolyn Brooks (Alexander is a Brooks scholar) was fantastic! One of my students, after reading this essay, decided to write about Brooks for her final research paper. It helped me, it helped my students.

[Julene · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the essays in this book. She carries forth the rich history of jazz and writing and how they combine. The book is full of history every American should know. She is a scholar, a historian who brings it forth to poetry with jazz as her underbeat.

[Tara Betts]

I've read the opening essay, which really pulled me in. I need to come back to it when I unpack my books.