Henry Louis Gates

“In so many ways and to so many people, Hughes was 'the Negro,' or at least 'Negro literature,' its public face, its spoken voice and cock­tail-party embodiment as well as the source of its printed texts.”

Originally published:

“Black culture doesn’t lack for modernist and postmoder­nist artists, just their critical equivalents. And now that, like Spielberg’s Poltergeist, they’re here, might as well face up to the fact that there’s no avoiding the recondite little suckers”

Originally published:

The coming age of the post-nationalist black aesthetic.

Originally published:

In 1988 the Voice made canon fodder of great literature — or at least lit crit