In Black and White
All 6 Volumes of In Black and White: Six Profiles of African American Authors can be licensed together or indivdually by volume.
EPISODES (Available individually or as part of the series)
VOL. 1: CHARLES JOHNSON(28 minutes)
VOL. 2: GLORIA NAYLOR (22 minutes)
VOL. 3: TONI MORRISON (25 minutes)
VOL. 4: ALICE WALKER (31 minutes)
VOL. 5: AUGUST WILSON (21 minutes)
VOL. 6: JOHN WIDEMAN (27 minutes)
In 1992, In Black and White was the first video series devoted to the life and work of contemporary African American authors. It introduces students and general readers to six of America's most talented and challenging writers: Charles Johnson, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, John Edgar Wideman and August Wilson.
These authors' work is helped to define a new multi-cultural American literary canon for the 21st Century. As Nobel Prize- winning novelist Toni Morrison observes in her program, "American literature is incoherent without the contribution of African Americans."
Teachers and librarians will want to use these "video prefaces" to encourage viewers to explore the exciting work of these six authors. Each program uses interviews with the writers and excerpts from their books to locate their work in the broader context of African American history and letters.
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson, for example, feels his plays on Black history originate in "the blood's memory." Toni Morrison tries to heal the wounds of the African American past by confronting them in her novels. John Edgar Wideman draws on his own family's experiences to explore the painful contradictions of contemporary Black life. Gloria Naylor says that her sharply etched portraits of Black communities "help us celebrate voraciously that which is ours."
Novelist Charles Johnson, on the other hand, combines Black folklore and modern phenomenology to "seek the universal in the particulars of the Black experience." And Alice Walker explains how her "womanist" perspective has helped her reconcile her triple identity as a woman, an African American and a writer. "It's like having three eyes, three hearts," she says. Each author emphasizes the crucial role writing has played in African Americans' continuing struggle for self-definition.
The In Black and White series includes the following titles:
In Black and White: Volume 1Part of In Black and White: Six Profiles of African American Authors. Charles Johnson explains how he weaves Black folktales, Zen parables, 19th century picaresque novels and 20th century existential philosophy into such novels as The Middle Passage.
In Black and White: Volume 2Part of In Black and White: Six Profiles of African American Authors. Gloria Naylor explains her exploration across the social spectrum of what it means to be Black in America in The Women of Brewster Place and Mama Day.
In Black and White: Volume 3Part of In Black and White: Six Profiles of African American Authors. Toni Morrison explains her view of why "American literature is incoherent without the contribution of African American writers."
In Black and White: Volume 4Part of In Black and White: Six Profiles of African American Authors. Alice Walker explains the "womanist" perspective that informs her novels including the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Color Purple.
In Black and White: Volume 5Part of In Black and White: Six Profiles of African American Authors. August Wilson explains his ongoing project to write a play about African American life set in each decade of the 20th century.
In Black and White: Voume 6Part of In Black and White: Six Profiles of African American Authors. John Edgar Wideman explains the connections he makes between the Pittsburgh ghetto of his birth and his novels Damballah and his memoir Brothers and Keepers.
Visit the title page to preview any of the titles above.
