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African American and Africana Studies

\ Vi-zə-bəl \ \ Teks-chərs \ (Visible Textures)

Author(s):
DaMaris B. Hill
Book summary:

\ Vi-zə-bəl \ \ Teks-chərs \ (Visible Textures) is a chapbook project of poems that incorporate digitalhumanities methods in creative expressions. The poems are inspired by GPS technologies. The series contrasts details and physical spaces associated with an 1854 Indian Reservation map of Kansas and a 2013 highway map of Kansas. Some poems detail territories allocated to Indigenous American Nations.

 

 

Publication year:
2015
Publisher:
Mammoth Publications–Lawrence, Kansas Artisan Literary Press Specializing in Indigenous American and Mid-Plains Authors
Praise:
Quote:
"DaMaris, Thank you so much for sharing this arresting dialogue…or so it seems to me. This is a densely textured testimony to her legacy, to her in you. It has re-ignited my fierce respect for a mother who sang to us, read to us all manner of books, along with her poetry which she slipped in front of us without speaking of it."
Credit:
Linda Williamson Nelon
Bio:
Photo:
Short bio:
DaMaris B. Hill is the author of The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland, \ Vi-zə-bəl \ \ Teks-chərs \(Visible Textures), and A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing (Bloomsbury, Jan 2019). She has a keen interest in the work of Toni Morrison and theories regarding ‘rememory’ as a philosophy and aesthetic practice. Hill has studied with writers such as Lucille Clifton, Monifa Love-Asante, Natasha Trethewey, Nikky Finney, Marita Golden, Deborah Willis and others. Her development as a writer has also been enhanced by the institutional support of the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Key West Literary Seminar/Writers Workshops, Callaloo Literary Writers Workshop, The Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities, The Project on the History of Black Writing, The Watering Hole Poetry, The Furious Flower Poetry Center and others. Similar to her creative process, Hill’s scholarly research is interdisciplinary. Hill is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.
Book URL:
https://mammothpublications.net/chapbooks-fine-arts-editions-of-30-pages-or-fewer/damaris-b-hill-vi-zə-bəl-teks-chərs-visible-textures/

The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland

Author(s):
DAMARIS B. HILL - CONTRIBUTIONS BY JASON BARRETT-FOX; DAMARIS B. HILL; TAMMY L. KERNODLE; DENISE LOW-WESO; VALERIE MENDOZA AND JAMES WEST
Book summary:

The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland engages in an important conversation about race relations in the twentieth century and significantly extends the historical narrative of the Civil Rights Movement. The essays in this collection examine instances of racial and gender oppression in the American heartland—which is conceived of here as having a specific cultural significance which resists diversity—in the twentieth century, instances which have often been ignored or overshadowed in typical historical narratives. The contributors explore the intersections of suffrage, race relations, and cultural histories, and add to an ongoing dialogue about representations of race and gender within the context of regional and national narratives.

Publication year:
2016
Publisher:
Lexington Books, Rowman and Littlefield
Praise:
Quote:
A thoughtful and extensive exploration of connections between the suffrage movement and the Civil Rights movement, The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow is a welcome contribution to college library American History and Sociology collections.
Credit:
Midwest Book Review
Quote:
The American Heartland just got bigger—the essays collected in this volume take intersectional approaches to race, gender, sexuality, and politics to expand our view on lives and cultures in the Midwest.
Credit:
Sherrie Tucker, University of Kansas
Bio:
Photo:
Short bio:
DaMaris B. Hill is the author of The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland, \ Vi-zə-bəl \ \ Teks-chərs \(Visible Textures), and A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing (Bloomsbury, Jan 2019). She has a keen interest in the work of Toni Morrison and theories regarding ‘rememory’ as a philosophy and aesthetic practice. Hill has studied with writers such as Lucille Clifton, Monifa Love-Asante, Natasha Trethewey, Nikky Finney, Marita Golden, Deborah Willis and others. Her development as a writer has also been enhanced by the institutional support of the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Key West Literary Seminar/Writers Workshops, Callaloo Literary Writers Workshop, The Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities, The Project on the History of Black Writing, The Watering Hole Poetry, The Furious Flower Poetry Center and others. Similar to her creative process, Hill’s scholarly research is interdisciplinary. Hill is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.
Book URL:
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739197899/The-Fluid-Boundaries-of-Suffrage-and-Jim-Crow-Staking-Claims-in-the-American-Heartland

A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland

Author(s):
DaMaris B. Hill
Book summary:

A Publishers Weekly Top 10 History Title

A revelatory work in the tradition of Claudia Rankine's Citizen, DaMaris Hill's searing and powerful narrative-in-verse bears witness to American women of color burdened by incarceration.

"It is costly to stay free and appear / sane."

From Harriet Tubman to Assata Shakur, Ida B. Wells to Sandra Bland and Black Lives Matter, black women freedom fighters have braved violence, scorn, despair, and isolation in order to lodge their protests. In A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing, DaMaris Hill honors their experiences with at times harrowing, at times hopeful responses to her heroes, illustrated with black-and-white photographs throughout.

For black American women, the experience of being bound has taken many forms: from the bondage of slavery to the Reconstruction-era criminalization of women; from the brutal constraints of Jim Crow to our own era's prison industrial complex, where between 1980 and 2014, the number of incarcerated women increased by 700%.* For those women who lived and died resisting the dehumanization of confinement--physical, social, intellectual--the threat of being bound was real, constant, and lethal.

Publication year:
2019
Publisher:
Bloomsbury USA and Bloomsbury Academic
Award(s):
A Publishers Weekly Top 10 History Title
Praise:
Quote:
"A memorable book that is neither easy to classify nor dismiss."
Credit:
Kirkus Review
Bio:
Photo:
Short bio:
DaMaris B. Hill is the author of The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland, \ Vi-zə-bəl \ \ Teks-chərs \(Visible Textures), and A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing (Bloomsbury, Jan 2019). She has a keen interest in the work of Toni Morrison and theories regarding ‘rememory’ as a philosophy and aesthetic practice. Hill has studied with writers such as Lucille Clifton, Monifa Love-Asante, Natasha Trethewey, Nikky Finney, Marita Golden, Deborah Willis and others. Her development as a writer has also been enhanced by the institutional support of the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Key West Literary Seminar/Writers Workshops, Callaloo Literary Writers Workshop, The Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities, The Project on the History of Black Writing, The Watering Hole Poetry, The Furious Flower Poetry Center and others. Similar to her creative process, Hill’s scholarly research is interdisciplinary. Hill is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.
Book URL:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/a-bound-woman-is-a-dangerous-thing-9781635572629/

Water Street

Author(s):
Crystal Wilkinson
Book summary:

In this critically acclaimed short story collection, Crystal Wilkinson peels back the intricate layers that form the fabric of this community and its inhabitants – revealing emotionally raw, multifaceted tales of race, class, gender, mental illness, and interpersonal relationships. The thirteen succinct stories offer fragmented glimpses of an overarching narrative that emerges, lyrical and fierce. Featuring a new foreword and a new afterword which illuminate Wilkinson’s artistic achievement, this captivating work is poised to delight a new generation of readers.

Publication year:
2017
Publisher:
University Press of Kentucky
Award(s):
Finalist for the Orange Prize
Finalist for the Hurston Wright Prize
Praise:
Quote:
Evidence of Wilkinson's considerable promise...Water Street continues to establish her as an author who deserves wider attention.
Credit:
The Washington Post
Quote:
Wilkinson is a storyteller in the tradition of Southerners such as Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers.
Credit:
Lexington Herald-Leader
Quote:
A sharp African American updating of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.
Credit:
Utne Reader
Bio:
Photo:
Short bio:
Crystal Wilkinson is the award-winning author of The Birds of Opulence (winner of the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence), Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. Nominated for both the Orange Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, she has received recognition from The Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Kentucky Arts Council, The Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and is a recipient of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in the Oxford American and Southern Cultures. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is Associate Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program.
Book URL:
https://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=2643#.XBkbDGhKizw

Blackberries, Blackberries

Author(s):
Crystal Wilkinson
Book summary:

As the title implies, this beautifully written collection bursts with stories reminiscent of blackberries - small, succulent morsels that are inviting and sweet, yet sometimes bitter. Crystal Wilkinson provides an almost voyeuristic glimpse into the lives of her characters: Two misfit teenagers seek stolen moments of love and acceptance in the cloak of night (Hushed); a woman spends every waking hour obsessed with dying yet ironically watching her loved ones pass away before her (Waiting on the Reaper); a wife confronts her husband’s mistress in a diner over potato skins and cornbread (Need); and a pious young woman’s torment erupt in a violent and unsuspecting resolution (No Ugly Ways).

The stories in this award-winning collection are terse and transient, like snippets taken from random dreams, thoughts, or conversations. Wilkinson is able to embed a vibrancy into each stunningly descriptive and evocative tale. Infused with humor, sadness and honesty, this provocative and haunting work features a new foreword and a new afterword by nationally acclaimed authors Nikky Finney and Honoree Jeffers.

Publication year:
2018
Publisher:
Toby Press and University Press of Kentucky
Bio:
Photo:
Short bio:
Crystal Wilkinson is the award-winning author of The Birds of Opulence (winner of the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence), Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. Nominated for both the Orange Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, she has received recognition from The Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Kentucky Arts Council, The Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and is a recipient of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in the Oxford American and Southern Cultures. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is Associate Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program.
Book URL:
https://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=2642#.XBkXfmhKizw

The Birds of Opulence

Author(s):
Crystal Wilkinson
Book summary:

In this novel four generations of women confront life and love in small-town Opulence, Kentucky weaving their family's portion of a southern black American community's fabric.

Publication year:
2016
Publisher:
University Press of Kentucky
Award(s):
Ernest J. Gaines Award for Excellence
Weatherford Award
Appalachian Book of the Year
Judy Gaines Award
Praise:
Quote:
Lyrical and visionary, unconventional, and infused with beauty.
Credit:
Maurice Manning, author of The Common Man, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry
Quote:
Those birds. . . . They swoop down on and around Opulence, Kentucky, proffering a sweeping perspective of more than three decades that’s both grand and intimate. Yes, they are all here, several generations of women - Minnie Mae, Tookie, Lucy, Francine, Yolanda, and Mona - and there are a few good men, too, each and every one of them indelible. Burnished with Wilkinson’s stunning prose, The Birds of Opulence is golden and magnificent.
Credit:
Robin Lippincott, author of Blue Territory, and In the Meantime
Bio:
Photo:
Short bio:
Crystal Wilkinson is the award-winning author of The Birds of Opulence (winner of the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence), Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. Nominated for both the Orange Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, she has received recognition from The Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Kentucky Arts Council, The Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and is a recipient of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in the Oxford American and Southern Cultures. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is Associate Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program.
Book URL:
https://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=4840#.XBkV12hKizw
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