Note from the Editor

Abstract

Note from the Editor Shauna M. Morgan In celebrating and chronicling the first fifty years of CLAJ publications, Dana A. Williams noted "the significant and unparalleled role the journal has played in publishing scholarship by and about people of color and our literatures and languages" (2). Williams's introduction to issue 57.1 served as both a comprehensive historiography and as a re-grounding of the values upon which CLA was built. Her observation that "CLA has always been fully aware of present realities, all the while looking to the future" rings true for the organization's journal even today (7). It is in that spirit that we offer this issue. CLAJ remains ambitious in its endeavors as we chart a new path in the 21st century. In addition to scholarly essays, readers will now find papers engaged with the kind of critical and transformative pedagogical practices that have been at the heart of CLA's work since its founding, and in honoring a tradition which began with the publication of the first issue of CLAJ, our pages will now also feature creative works across genre. This inclusive approach offers a fuller view of the cultural productions of our expanding membership, and it creates space for the innovative and imaginative works currently shaping our literary landscape. Jacob Pagano's "One Must Say Yes: Poetic Acts of Affirmation in Works by Baldwin, Fanon, and Ellison" examines Black speech acts and the ways in which they are represented in order to affirm the complexities of Black subjectivity even as the writers accomplish aims beyond the literary projects. The essay positions the writings (both fiction and non-fiction) of James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, and Ralph Ellison as constructing communal affirmations and presenting language as a means for understanding community and one's place in it. Pagano's analysis of the seemingly basic affirmation of yes uncovers the innumerable possibilities of questioning extant understandings of canonical Black writing. "Stories to Tell: Family and Reality in Hip-Hop Autobiographies" by John Paul Meyers examines the life writing of three very different hip-hop artists and firmly situates their work in the long tradition of African American autobiography. Exploring the thematic elements which emerge in these texts, Meyers offers us a look at the aesthetic and narrative intersections of these artists lived experiences and lyrical work, and he invites scholars and artists to consider the possibilities of what we can learn about the craft of hip hop by studying autobiographical writings. In his essay, "'Cause that's the way the world turns': John Edgar Wideman's Sent for You Yesterday and the Mnemonic Jukebox, Jurgen E. Grandt asserts that "[r]ecorded music resonates within a suspension of time—or, more precisely, the spiral grooves of records revive a past event in the present, a repeatable action that riffs, however briefly, upon the (ostensibly) linear progression of history." This point [End Page 191] brings us immediately into the environment of the novel as Grandt thoroughly articulates the ways in which Wideman's Homewood is not only infused with music, but in addition to the world of the text, the language of the novel itself employs the aesthetic of the music that touches the character's lives. The pedagogical study presented in Nathaniel Norment Jr,'s "Some Results of Using Culture-referenced Prompts for Pre and Post-Test Writing Examinations at an HBCU" is both a reminder of CLA's roots and historical focus and a call for us to critically evaluate and enhance our pedagogy whether we are rooted at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) or plowing the earth at a Predominantly/Historically White Institution. As Monique L. Akassi asserts in the brief commentary which precedes this essay, "the need for more pedagogical attention in the CLAJ is more relevant now than ever." doris davenport's brief reflection on CLAJ's creative writing section reminds us that, in addition to being provisions for the exhilarating exercise of literary criticism, literary arts give us "meaning and inspiration" and help us move through a perpetually troubled world. The gathering of poems and creative non-fiction reflects an innerness and calls us to consider our connections to...