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<h4 class="gmail_default">Clifford Thompson is the author of Twin of Blackness: A Memoir, Love for Sale and Other Essays, and a novel, Signifying Nothing. His&nbsp;upcoming book, What It is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man's Blues, will be published in the fall.</h4>
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Clifford Thompson

Joel Terence Rhone is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago, where he studies the role of African American literary production in the logics of multiculturalism. He is the author of “Bringing it Back to Baldwin: Myth, Memoir, and America’s Racial Reckoning,” recently featured in The Drift magazine.

Joel Rhone

Letter to the Editor: Clifford Thompson Responds to Joel Rhone

"You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." — Molly Ivins

Politics

"The older one grows, the more one likes indecency." — Virginia Woolf

Memoir &amp; Essay

Fictional Blues

Fictional Blues: Narrative Self-Invention from Bessie Smith to Jack White

"Writing only leads to more writing." — Colette

Literary Criticism

"I don't care much about music. What I like is sounds." — Dizzy Gillespie

Music

Deacon King Kong

Humor Is the Dominant Note: On James McBride’s “Deacon King Kong”

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

Fiction

Toni Morrison’s Big Bang

Jimmy’s Blues

Hunger

The Damage Done

Journey of Miles

"There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education." — Will Rogers

Film

Our Hero and His Blues: Celebrating Albert Murray

"There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them." — Federico García Lorca

Nonfiction

"Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors." — Simone Weil

Cultural Studies

Eric Garner and Me

Clifford Thompson is the author of Twin of Blackness: A Memoir, Love for Sale and Other Essays, and a novel, Signifying Nothing. His&nbsp;upcoming book, What It is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man's Blues, will be published in the fall.