Sunday Morning
A SUNDAY MORNING
This has a weekend for laughter and not-laughter.
I laughed as I read extensive commentaries on the fate of the classics at Howard University. The absence of commentary on the fate of the classics at M.I.T. and the University of Utah rendered me incapable of laughing. I was reduced to wondering what a novel entitled HOMER WAS WATCHING SATAN would be. A best-seller among militant, cancel culture Republicans? A book that would cause many Democrats to weep over how successful the murder of American democracy has become?
It is known in the underground that Jimmy Crow has mental health issues and is stockpiling weapons of massive destruction.
I did not welcome the allegation that a person named Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Palestinians in 1994, nor did I welcome inadequate coverage of violence in Uganda. Pandemic and how the world is turning have afflicted me with stage 2 hypertension. I did welcome the progress I am making in answering interview questions. Here is one example -----
ZHANG: Yes, the CCNU students were extremely privileged and fortunately. I was also lucky to have attended some of the lectures. I can recall the happy days with you. Since you have had lectured around China, what’s your idea about African American Studies in China?
WARD: From the generally positive response to my lectures, I concluded that there was a strong interest in African American Literature at the universities where I gave talks. As you know African American Studies goes beyond analyses and assessments of works designated as literature and devotes substantial attention to a broader range of cultural categories -----ideology, history, education, class ,gender, race, economy, and so forth. The most thorough description of its paradigm is contained in Introduction to Afro-American A Peoples College Primer (1973) edited by Abdul Alkalimat. Many Chinese scholars and students I had conversations with between 2009 and 2016 were still in the first stages of becoming familiar with the breadth of African American literature .Many of the senior scholars who had studied in the USA were better informed about established and emerging black writers. Lack of easy access to texts and evolving critical resources slowed the process for the younger scholars; even the full texts of works canonized in The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (1997) and The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition (1998) were not easy to obtain. It was not surprising to me that progress in acquiring knowledge was slow. However strong the interest in African American literature was, the library resources were limited, and many factors limited the development of necessary curricula . After the national reform of Chinese universities that began in 2016 was completed, the opportunities for specialized study of foreign literature and culture may have improved.
In 2914, I urged my Chinese and American colleagues to establish the African American Research Network (AARN). I wanted CCNU to become the principle center for robust study of African American literature and to have stronger connections with the Project on the History of Black Writing (University of Kansas) and a spectrum of American scholars. AARN did flourish for a brief period, and the exchanges that I and other American scholars had with our Chinese colleagues were productive. I hope the AARN can be resuscitated.
Both Chinese and American scholars might consider the implications of Zhenzhao Nie's influential writings about ethical literary criticism for studies of African American literature, because ethical issues are pervasive in black writing. Lili Wang's "Critical Reception of African American Women Writers in Mainland China," published in the Journal of Ethnic American Literature, Issue 9 (2019), suggests to me that critical reception of African American men writers is still underdeveloped. When I sampled the China Academic Journal (CAJ) database recently, I found zero articles on Jeffery R. Allen and Sterling D. Plumpp and only one article on Edward P. Jones and eight on John Oliver Killens. The number of articles on Richard Wright, Amiri Baraka, and James Baldwin is relatively impressive, but the work of such writers as Keenan Norris, Ernest Gaines, John Edgar Wideman, August Wilson, and Randall Kenan also merit attention.
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Justice is divorced from contrition, and Crime is divorced from compassion. We are in trouble. I suppose the conversation I am scheduled to have this summer with a younger scholar about John Rawls's A Theory of Justice will open new vistas.
Lies are laxatives to relieve the constipation of a truth. Americans have perfected lying to one another.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. 5/16/2021 6:51:40 AM
A SUNDAY MORNING
This has a weekend for laughter and not-laughter.
I laughed as I read extensive commentaries on the fate of the classics at Howard University. The absence of commentary on the fate of the classics at M.I.T. and the University of Utah rendered me incapable of laughing. I was reduced to wondering what a novel entitled HOMER WAS WATCHING SATAN would be. A best-seller among militant, cancel culture Republicans? A book that would cause many Democrats to weep over how successful the murder of American democracy has become?
It is known in the underground that Jimmy Crow has mental health issues and is stockpiling weapons of massive destruction.
I did not welcome the allegation that a person named Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Palestinians in 1994, nor did I welcome inadequate coverage of violence in Uganda. Pandemic and how the world is turning have afflicted me with stage 2 hypertension. I did welcome the progress I am making in answering interview questions. Here is one example -----
ZHANG: Yes, the CCNU students were extremely privileged and fortunately. I was also lucky to have attended some of the lectures. I can recall the happy days with you. Since you have had lectured around China, what’s your idea about African American Studies in China?
WARD: From the generally positive response to my lectures, I concluded that there was a strong interest in African American Literature at the universities where I gave talks. As you know African American Studies goes beyond analyses and assessments of works designated as literature and devotes substantial attention to a broader range of cultural categories -----ideology, history, education, class ,gender, race, economy, and so forth. The most thorough description of its paradigm is contained in Introduction to Afro-American A Peoples College Primer (1973) edited by Abdul Alkalimat. Many Chinese scholars and students I had conversations with between 2009 and 2016 were still in the first stages of becoming familiar with the breadth of African American literature .Many of the senior scholars who had studied in the USA were better informed about established and emerging black writers. Lack of easy access to texts and evolving critical resources slowed the process for the younger scholars; even the full texts of works canonized in The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (1997) and The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition (1998) were not easy to obtain. It was not surprising to me that progress in acquiring knowledge was slow. However strong the interest in African American literature was, the library resources were limited, and many factors limited the development of necessary curricula . After the national reform of Chinese universities that began in 2016 was completed, the opportunities for specialized study of foreign literature and culture may have improved.
In 2914, I urged my Chinese and American colleagues to establish the African American Research Network (AARN). I wanted CCNU to become the principle center for robust study of African American literature and to have stronger connections with the Project on the History of Black Writing (University of Kansas) and a spectrum of American scholars. AARN did flourish for a brief period, and the exchanges that I and other American scholars had with our Chinese colleagues were productive. I hope the AARN can be resuscitated.
Both Chinese and American scholars might consider the implications of Zhenzhao Nie's influential writings about ethical literary criticism for studies of African American literature, because ethical issues are pervasive in black writing. Lili Wang's "Critical Reception of African American Women Writers in Mainland China," published in the Journal of Ethnic American Literature, Issue 9 (2019), suggests to me that critical reception of African American men writers is still underdeveloped. When I sampled the China Academic Journal (CAJ) database recently, I found zero articles on Jeffery R. Allen and Sterling D. Plumpp and only one article on Edward P. Jones and eight on John Oliver Killens. The number of articles on Richard Wright, Amiri Baraka, and James Baldwin is relatively impressive, but the work of such writers as Keenan Norris, Ernest Gaines, John Edgar Wideman, August Wilson, and Randall Kenan also merit attention.
-------------------
Justice is divorced from contrition, and Crime is divorced from compassion. We are in trouble. I suppose the conversation I am scheduled to have this summer with a younger scholar about John Rawls's A Theory of Justice will open new vistas.
Lies are laxatives to relieve the constipation of a truth. Americans have perfected lying to one another.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. 5/16/2021 6:51:40 AM
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