the autobiography of malcolm x barnes and noble

The voice on the other side belonged to James Kass, founder and executive director of the nonprofit poetry organization Youth Speaks. I turned down the music and put my ear to the phone. Whoever it was had left a voicemail message. It was in this uniquely boisterous environment-surrounded by the charismatic boasts of hip-hop and dance-hall, the steel boom of soca and kompa, hallways filled with laughter and conversation-that I looked up from my notes to see a missed call from a California area code. Though Du Bois himself had a truly harrowing time as a faculty member at the university back in 1896-he was allowed neither to have an office nor to teach students during his time at Penn-the dormitory was as robust a reflection of human life on Earth as one might hope to see on a college campus: students from all over the world, mostly black and brown, choosing to live in this place for its emphasis on social justice, the arts, and the celebration of cultural practices from across the African diaspora. Du Bois College House: a dormitory at the edge of Penn's campus named for the philosopher, sociologist, novelist, and poet. I was a newly minted double major in English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, nearing the end of my junior year. Blu & Exile's Below the Heavens played as loudly as my second-generation MacBook would allow. It was the spring semester of 2009, and I was alone in my dorm room, looking over notes for my film class on Spike Lee, trying to connect Malcolm X and Mo' Better Blues in a way that felt entirely original.

The autobiography of malcolm x barnes and noble