Articles

Marvel’s follow-up to the successful Black Panther Wakanda Forever suggests that the Wakandan and Talokan custodians of vibranium, similarly to subjugated native peoples whose resources were exhausted by colonialism, have most to fear from rising tides and temperatures.

A new documentary on the exemplary activist and Hollywood star Burdened by the expectations of black people around the world, the Oscar-winning actor embodied grace even under fire

The struggle between vaxxers and anti-vaxxers in a US school Though first staged in 2018, before the onset of the Covid-19 outbreak, this is a play that speaks to the upheaval and the ethical dilemmas, personal and public, that have arisen since 2020. Ostensibly this is a contemporary tragicomic drama about an outbreak of mumps …

Eureka Day: No one is a villain Read More »

It draws on a catalogue of alien invasion and horror film tropes, but is Nope dope? Jordan Peele has established his signature as a writer/director of smart and knowing horror films such as Get Out and Us that have exposed white Americans’ fear of retribution for the litany of crimes committed against their black compatriots …

Nope: A hybrid of horror and alien invasion films Read More »

Humility lessons from the retired neurosurgeon, Henry Marsh The ever candid neurosurgeon reflects on his own mortality, as well as the failings of his profession, in this enthralling third volume of memoirs

After the lost years of Covid, yes man, Carnival wheel and come again; it’s back! Carnival has too many friends to fail; it gives shape and meaning to too many lives, renewed each year; Carnival has not just proven a vital bridge between Britons, it has come, in some ways, to signify an ideal of …

Return of the Glue Gun Revolutionaries Read More »

Timelines, narratives and communities reimagined by artists of the African diaspora Decades before Hollywood’s popular Marvel movie Black Panther, the fabulously outrageous jazz musician Sun Ra set out the stalls for what would come to be called Afrofuturism in Space Is the Place. 

Though Roy Heath spent most of his life in Britain, he returned again and again in his fiction to Guyana. Like many of his pioneering generation, he stayed in Britain until his death in 2008; in his fiction, though, Heath returned again and again to Guyana. He hardly wrote about Britain; his focus was always …

The Enigma of Nonarrival Read More »

Reflecting on the legacy of colonialism

The US artist reflects on her Child Q collage She used to work in a shoe-shop but her work now sells for huge sums and is collected by big museums and Beyoncé. The African American explains why she tackled the shocking strip-search of a 15-year-old girl in a London school

“Wheel and come again” is how Ethlyn once described this circular migration, back and forth from the island, from somewhere to elsewhere, to turn around and start all over again.

The artist is revisiting his three-screen film about the legendary thinker and activist, which takes in jazz, Vietnam, and the family trauma that haunted Hall

In Wole Soyinka’s laceratingly satirical new novel, Nigeria has lost its way and is inured to corruption and violence.

A young man struggles to escape a life of violent crime in this gritty fable about love, faith and redemption

CLR James’s writings on empire and cricket were marked by moral clarity and mischievous provocation

The pioneering African American writer’s nonfiction pieces have a power, depth and courage that still resonate more than 60 years after her death