Publisher's Synopsis
Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Fiction. Drama. California Interest. African & African American Studies. Women's Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. Film. Art. Contributors include Zo� Samudzi, Christian Johnson, Leila Weefur, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Ismail Muhammad, Ra Malika Imhotep, Jamal Batts, Shah Noor Hussein, Ryanaustin Dennis, and Ed Ntiri (photographs).
Responding to the films and interviewing the filmmakers of season two, films made by independent Black filmmakers, THE BLACK AESTHETIC SEASON II contains works that contribute to a larger conversation that attempts to define and demarcate boundaries around "Black" aesthetics while also positioning the diasporic diversity of Black cultural production and aesthetics as a self-contained and self-referential global body of work.
Where the first book was responding specifically to cinematic portrayals of Black womanhood/femininity and to projects by Black women as a part of an artistic canon, this book speaks more explicitly to that canon's larger composition and the array of themes, politics, senses and affective politics--both complementary and contradictory--contained within. Are there qualifiers to the degree of blackness of artistic work? Can non-blackness exist within a Black space? Does a quintessentially Black aesthetic exist within white institutions? Does blackness exist outside of whiteness' negation? Through engaging these questions and other questions posed and answered by contributors, THE BLACK AESTHETIC SEASON II continues to seek out and define the potentially undefinable Black aesthetic.
Films explored: 100 Boyfriends Mixtape by Brontez Purnell, Breathless by Anaiis Cisco, Day by Day and Man Who Feared by Jehnovah Carlisle, I gave myself space to go back by Yetunde Olagbaju, Good White People by Jarrod Willing-Cann & Erick Stoll, Short Films by Summer Mason, Lucid Noon, Sunset Blush by Alli Logout
