The Blues Society released in 2023

In the segregated Memphis of the 1960s, blues masters and beatniks created a music festival that rocked the foundations of a conservative world.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28797163

#movie #blackmovie #blackmusic #bealestreet #jamesbaldwin #greatmovie #blackmastodon

Nicholas Boggs for Baldwin: A Love Story

https://appearances.authorbuzz.co.uk/appearances/nicholas-boggs-for-baldwin-a-love-story/

Second half of free reading #poem #library #books #atwood #jamesbaldwin #progressive #kurtvonnegut

bookshop and library tour of my new #poetry book and the paperback edition of Normally Weird https://www.robinince.com

This is the first half of my #poem about the freedom to read and those who fight for it #library #books #margaretatwood #jamesbaldwin #progressive #kurtvonnegut

I will be on a bookshop and library tour if my new #poetry book and the paperback edition of Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal www.robinince.com

"Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." -James Baldwin

This definition of love isn't about the infantile version of happiness, it is a state of grace, strength, and renewal. To see someone's flaws is to finally see the person.

#JamesBaldwin #Philosophy #HumanConnection #Fediverse

I Am Not a Gun

Reconstructing Manliness with The Iron Giant and Mr. Darcy

“What is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me.”

— Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2.

When I was in college I decided to start a faith-based discussion group for men, about well, being a man. For some strange reason, I felt that it had to be very early in the morning, because getting up early was manly. In my campus-wide emails I also resorted to tasteless jokes about going out to chop down trees and break rocks with heads. Whatever this says about my social development is less relevant than the question that I was attempting to answer, however foolishly, with that group and those jokes: What does it mean to be a man?

This is a question that has tortured me since my adolescence, and tortures me still. Whether this essay will provide any relief remains to be seen. My small group, unsurprisingly, was not very popular, even with my Christian friends. Not many undergraduate guys were willing to get up for a discussion group that started at 6:30am on Friday mornings; or if they were willing, the flesh was weak. This does not mean that the group was a failure, because I had one regular attendee who I was able to talk quite deeply with, and I still think about him today. I was also told by a few people that they would have attended if it was at a less inconvenient time. This showed me that I was not the only one tortured by the question.

So, what does it mean to be a man? We will find out together, dear reader, whether I am any better equipped to answer this question than I was over a decade ago. But first I must define exactly what is meant by it. We could try to answer it by taking a survey of the men in our lives, and saying, “These examples show what it is to be a man.” But despite confounding us with wildly different conclusions, this method also reveals to us our bias. I think that most of us, consciously or unconsciously, have already taken a survey of the men in our lives, and the results have made us uneasy. That the question occurs to us reveals an insecurity about manhood that cannot be assuaged by the simple truth that no men are perfect. We would not be asking if there wasn't something resembling a real crisis. What I believe we really mean to ask is, “What does it mean to be a good man?”

[...]

https://blog.hdansin.com/i-am-not-a-gun

“Everyone you’re looking at is also you” #jamesbaldwin

From: @stefan
https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/113439103442820640