Art Notes
The Pulitzer Prize for poetry, the award for “a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author” went to Natasha Trethewey for Native Guard. The prestigious recognition includes an award of $10,000.
Native Guard, Trethewey’s third collection of poems, in part, recalls the experiences of a little known Black Union Army regiment that guarded a fort off the coast of Mississippi during the Civil War. Tretheway told PBS’s NewsHour that when visiting the site as child she wondered why Confederate soldiers who had served at the same fort had been memorialized with a plaque but no such memorial had been established for the Black soldiers. Trethewey said that through her poetry she wanted to “tell a fuller version of their story.”
The other major theme in Native Guard explores the tragic thread woven through the life of Trethewey’s mother, a social worker who was abused and later killed by her second husband. The poet also writes about her parents’ marriage (Trethewey’s mother was black and her father is white) and the reaction to the illegal union in 1960s Mississippi.
Natasha Trethewey’s other collections include Bellocq’s Ophelia and Domestic Work, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Trethewey was previously awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and the Pushcart Prize. She is currently an associate professor of Creative Writing at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
* * *It is worth noting that a few weeks ago, we heard several television reports citing Alice Walker to be the first Black winner of a Pulitzer Prize. That distinction, of course, goes to Gwendolyn Brooks who was recognized in 1950 for her landmark volume of poetry, Annie Allen. Alice Walker would win the prize for fiction with her novel, The Color Purple, in 1983.
* * *Talk about writing your own ticket! Television star Blair Underwood has teamed with veteran writers, Tanananrive Due and Steve Barnes to pen CasaNegra: A Tennyson Hardwick Novel. Part romance, part mystery, Underwood’s plan is to move the story directly to film.
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Guess what is coming to Broadway? Plans are being made to stage Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Can the film remake, musical stage version and musical film be far behind?
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Renowned Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates is producing a sequel to his popular PBS series African American Lives. Maya Angelou, Dave Chappelle, Morgan Freeman, Tom Joyner and Tina Turner are among the participants in African American Lives 2 who will be guided through traditional genealogical research and DNA analysis to discover their family history and African ancestry.
The success of the original series has been enough to spawn a future book, a companion Web site, and teacher training and outreach events across the country. African American Lives 2 will air in February 2008.
In addition to African American Lives 2, through his production company, Inkwell Films, Gates is currently developing The History of the African American People, an eight-part series tentatively slated for national broadcast premiere in 2009-2010.