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The Blues Behind Bars: How Southern prisons shaped American music
Incarcerated musicians have crafted some of the most iconic songs in American history, but from convict leasing to JPay, Southern prisons have also been the sites of cultural and creative extraction, offering performers little in return.
You're the type to get in good trouble.
Southern politics
Plantation Politics: The New Orleans Musicians' Clinic's crisis of credibility
The New Orleans Musicians' Clinic is a unique and vital health care and social services resource for the city's culture bearers and performing artists. But after more than a dozen resignations, former staff members reveal an internal culture that stands in stark contradiction with the nonprofit's mission.
Arts & Soul
How Tina Turner's trauma remains a hip-hop trope—and why we need to abolish it
In their lyrics, rappers and hip-hop artists have long reduced Tina Turner's abuse to a metaphor for violence, aggression, and dominance. Erasing the nuance of her lived experience stalls our collective understanding of domestic violence and abolition.
Race & Place
Disaster capitalism, climate change, and the campaign to sell Black New Orleans
The 2007 'Forever New Orleans' advertising campaign was intended to celebrate the city's rich and diverse culture and history. In reality, it commodified the Black culture bearers who shaped the city for centuries as tourism bait.
Long reads
How 'the shadow of state abandonment' fostered then foiled Young Thug's YSL
Cop City, Gentrification, and Young Thug: Atlanta's uneven war over greenspace in 'The City of the Forest'
Why your new diet is antiblack
Essays & Letters
My heart is wrapped in concertina wire
The Captive Maternal is a function, not an identity marker
What's Next for the Captive Maternal, Part II: Notes on a Rebel(lion) without a Cause
What's Next for the Captive Maternal: Notes on a Rebel(lion) without a Cause
On the Tensions and (Im)Possibilities of Black Poetics: No Shame, No Devil
Reflections on Reproductive Justice and the Captive Maternal
Radical Care Work in the Project of Schooling
Field notes
More stories
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