“Thinking From Black” Explores Language Of Black Life

(MENAFN- USA Art News) A new publication, Thinking From Black: A Lexicon, published in 2026 and edited by Tina Campt, Kaiama L. Glover, Canisia Lubrin, Tavia Nyong'o, Christina Sharpe, and Alexander Ghedi Weheliye, is described as a“diasporic glossary.” The book was created by the Practicing Refusal Collective, a group of Black feminist academics who have been meeting since 2015.

The collective's goal is to expand critical discussions surrounding Black life across various disciplines. Members, including artists, poets, and historians, contribute their chosen words and offer definitions of phrases, both traditional and speculative, written and unwritten, from which Blackness emerges.

The book's entries do not offer simple explanations. Instead, it serves as a starting point for readers to reflect on the challenges, joys, rituals, and urgent issues affecting Black life globally. The work echoes Barbadian poet and scholar Kamau Brathwaite's 1979 speech at Harvard University, later published as History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry ( 1984 ).

In his speech, Brathwaite asserted,“The hurricane does not roar in pentameter.” He discussed the diasporic linguistics prevalent in the Caribbean and how colonial English structures failed to capture the archipelago's perspective. He identified these communications as“nation language,” defining it as an amalgamation of sonic and verbal nuances that blend African influences into a creolized Caribbean tongue. Brathwaite explained,“nation language” is“an English which is like a howl, or a shout or a machine-gun or the wind or a wave. It is also like the blues.”

Source: Hyperallergic

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