Amy A Ongiri | University of Portland (original) (raw)
Papers by Amy A Ongiri
... according to the paper. (44) For Soul on Lee, the dismemberment of Emmett Till's bod... more ... according to the paper. (44) For Soul on Lee, the dismemberment of Emmett Till's body?which was so ... In the attempt to resist the threat of dissolution which the Emmett Till narrative provides and to symbolically rebuild a sense of self, it is necessary for ...
Transition, 2023
Damaso Perez Prado, who would later be internationally dubbed the “King of the Mambo” after the s... more Damaso Perez Prado, who would later be internationally dubbed the “King of the Mambo” after the success of his music in the US market, was both diminutive and dark, an unlikely symbol for sex and sensuality in the postwar US culture that created the very blonde Doris Day and very tall Rock Hudson (6’5”) as cultural icons. When he shot to stardom in 1955 with his version of the song “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White” occupying the number one spot on the music charts for ten straight weeks—it seemed unprecedented. However, the transnational dance and music craze that would be called “Mambomania” was the culmination of years of African American and Afro-Caribbean cultural exchange, which drew on the groups’ shared Africanity but was also fraught with racial politics.
Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art, Sep 1, 2007
Journal of African American History, 2014
American Literature, 2012
The Journal of American History, Feb 19, 2012
The American Historical Review, Apr 1, 2002
Encrucijada, 2003
In 1985, 108 of every 100,000 U.S. residents were incarcerated in some form of prison facility (c... more In 1985, 108 of every 100,000 U.S. residents were incarcerated in some form of prison facility (county, state, federal). Despite continuous national declines in crime, by the 1997 that figured had nearly doubled to 212 of every 100,000 U.S. residents (DOC). These statistics, shocking enough in their own right, are even more shocking when read in relation to the rest of the world. The United States now imprisons more people than any other country in the world possibly as much as half a million more than Communist China (Schlosser). In states such as California that lead the United States and the world in the creation and development of a prison industrial complex and implementation of an oppressive "law and order" culture, that figure is expected to grow astronomically into the new millennium. The case for prisons as a growth industry in California simply cannot be overstated. A report written in December 1998 states: California now has the biggest prison system in the Western industrialized world, a system 40 percent bigger than the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The state holds more inmates in its jails and prisons than do France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the Netherlands combined. The California Department of Corrections predicts that at the current rate of expansion, barring a court order that forces a release of prisoners, it will run out of room eighteen months from now. (Schlosser)
On February 15 2013, George Zimmerman's brother appeared on an episode of the television show "Re... more On February 15 2013, George Zimmerman's brother appeared on an episode of the television show "Real Time with Bill Maher" to exonerate his brother. He did so on the basis that his brother, as a Latino, was not capable of racism because he and his family were not only descendants of slaves but were also victims of and sensitive to anti-Latino racism. In an age of "colorblindness" that seeks to put a history of anti-Black violence under constant erasure, we have to be very clear that the case of Trayvon Martin is not simply about racism. Instead we must view it in the context of a history of anti-Black violence in the US that is very long and continues to be incredibly pervasive. In order to fully understand the ways in which anti-Black violence has been and continues to be a fixed component of American life, even in an era of "colorblindness," it is necessary to consider the ways in which visual culture helps to create an ideological environment that can transform an unarmed, baby-faced teenage boy into a criminal so dangerous that his mere presence justifies the use of deadly force.
Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Mar 12, 2020
Journal of African American History, 2009
We should be careful about using those terms that might turn our friends off. The terms "fag... more We should be careful about using those terms that might turn our friends off. The terms "faggot" and "punk" should be deleted from our vocabulary, and especially we should not attach names normally designed for homosexuals to men who are enemies of the people, such as Richard Nixon and John Mitchell. Homosexuals are not enemies of the people. --Huey P. Newton (1970) I behaved like a prisoner of love. --Jean Genet (1981) French writer Jean Genet revealed in a 1975 interview with German writer Hubert Fichte, "I could only feel at home among people oppressed by color or factions in revolt against whites. Maybe I'm a black who's white or pink, but still black." Apparently, Genet was echoing the views of a generation of elite white intellectuals and artists who articulated a revolutionary subjectivity by identifying with the liberation struggles of oppressed people of African descent around the world. (1) Actors, artists, and intellectuals such as Jean Seberg, Marlon Brando. Bert Schneider, Jean Genet, Leonard Bernstein, Agnes Varda, Jean Paul Sartre, Romain Gary, and political radicals such as Ulrike Meinhof of Germany's Red Army Faction, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin of the Yippies, and Bernardine Dohrn of the Weather Underground all proclaimed an affinity for and affiliation with the Black Panther Party (BPP) and saw the Panthers as providing important models not only for political and social change, but for profound personal transformations. The Black Panthers became masters at creating a radical visual and discursive language of affiliation and identification that expressed the need for personal involvement in liberatory social and political change. In September 1970 BPP Chairman Huey P. Newton declared at the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention that "homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in society. They might be the most oppressed people in society ... maybe a homosexual could be the most revolutionary." (2) Newton was attesting to the complexities that the Panther model of identification articulated as both a theory and praxis of revolutionary self-making. It is impossible to attribute the widespread appeal of the Black Panther Party to non-African Americans, women, and sexual minorities to the caricatures found in many contemporary accounts that embody a simple phallocentric masculinity and a repository of reductionist racial politics. This essay examines the ways the models of identification offered by the Black Panther Party created and provoked a radical affiliation among people as far removed from the African American struggle as the openly gay literary artist Jean Genet and Hollywood actress Jean Seberg. It asserts that the Black Panther Party's discourse of affiliation and identification created a space within radical political discourse for gender and sexual outsiders to rearticulate themselves discursively as empowered by their outsider status and association with "revolutionaries." The Black Panther Party differed from other contemporaneous radical political formations of the Black Power era because the leadership was able to promote the empowerment of African Americans while articulating a vision of radical political possibility and change that included the "refiguring of identity" across a broad spectrum of political, gender, and sexual categories. Black Panther iconography relied on the models of affiliation and identification reflected in the "vanguard model of political activism" proposed by Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Guerilla Warfare and later cogently rearticulated by Regis Debray in Revolution within the Revolution? Armed Struggle and Political Struggle in Latin America. (3) In Guerilla Warfare Che Guevara used the example of the Cuban Revolution to demonstrate the ways in which a small group of revolutionaries could successfully foment revolution in the face of the challenges posed in facing off against a large state-sponsored, professionally trained army. …
Journal of Asian American Studies, 2002
The American Historical Review, 2002
Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures, 2021
This essay will explore the ways in which African American visual culture has attempted to negoti... more This essay will explore the ways in which African American visual culture has attempted to negotiate criminalization and the current situation of what Richard Iton rightfully characterizes as “hyperincarceration.” It will explore the ways in which contemporary African American visual culture is engaged in negotiating between the literal material realities and consequences of mass incarceration and aesthetic constructions of violence. While mass incarceration is increasingly becoming understood as “the New Jim Crow” for African American political organizing, Black criminality has become the key lens through which questions of masculinity, class exclusion, gender, and selfhood get negotiated in African American visual culture. This essay will argue that the “subtext of ongoing Black captivity” is the pretext for much of what drives Black action genres and African American representation in general as a key signifier of a racialized identity and as an indicator of a Black subjectivity ...
American Literature, 2012
This essay will explore the ways in which African American visual culture has attempted to negoti... more This essay will explore the ways in which African American visual culture has attempted to negotiate criminalization and the current situation of what Richard Iton rightfully characterizes as "hyperincarceration." It will explore the ways in which contemporary African American visual culture is engaged in negotiating between the literal material realities and consequences of mass incarceration and aesthetic constructions of violence. While mass incarceration is increasingly becoming understood as "the New Jim Crow" for African American political organizing, Black criminality has become the key lens through which questions of masculinity, class exclusion, gender, and selfhood get negotiated in African American visual culture. This essay will argue that the "subtext of ongoing Black captivity" is the pretext for much of what drives Black action genres and African American representation in general as a key signifier of a racialized identity and as an indicator of a Black subjectivity fraught with complexities of non-belonging.
... according to the paper. (44) For Soul on Lee, the dismemberment of Emmett Till's bod... more ... according to the paper. (44) For Soul on Lee, the dismemberment of Emmett Till's body?which was so ... In the attempt to resist the threat of dissolution which the Emmett Till narrative provides and to symbolically rebuild a sense of self, it is necessary for ...
Transition, 2023
Damaso Perez Prado, who would later be internationally dubbed the “King of the Mambo” after the s... more Damaso Perez Prado, who would later be internationally dubbed the “King of the Mambo” after the success of his music in the US market, was both diminutive and dark, an unlikely symbol for sex and sensuality in the postwar US culture that created the very blonde Doris Day and very tall Rock Hudson (6’5”) as cultural icons. When he shot to stardom in 1955 with his version of the song “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White” occupying the number one spot on the music charts for ten straight weeks—it seemed unprecedented. However, the transnational dance and music craze that would be called “Mambomania” was the culmination of years of African American and Afro-Caribbean cultural exchange, which drew on the groups’ shared Africanity but was also fraught with racial politics.
Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art, Sep 1, 2007
Journal of African American History, 2014
American Literature, 2012
The Journal of American History, Feb 19, 2012
The American Historical Review, Apr 1, 2002
Encrucijada, 2003
In 1985, 108 of every 100,000 U.S. residents were incarcerated in some form of prison facility (c... more In 1985, 108 of every 100,000 U.S. residents were incarcerated in some form of prison facility (county, state, federal). Despite continuous national declines in crime, by the 1997 that figured had nearly doubled to 212 of every 100,000 U.S. residents (DOC). These statistics, shocking enough in their own right, are even more shocking when read in relation to the rest of the world. The United States now imprisons more people than any other country in the world possibly as much as half a million more than Communist China (Schlosser). In states such as California that lead the United States and the world in the creation and development of a prison industrial complex and implementation of an oppressive "law and order" culture, that figure is expected to grow astronomically into the new millennium. The case for prisons as a growth industry in California simply cannot be overstated. A report written in December 1998 states: California now has the biggest prison system in the Western industrialized world, a system 40 percent bigger than the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The state holds more inmates in its jails and prisons than do France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the Netherlands combined. The California Department of Corrections predicts that at the current rate of expansion, barring a court order that forces a release of prisoners, it will run out of room eighteen months from now. (Schlosser)
On February 15 2013, George Zimmerman's brother appeared on an episode of the television show "Re... more On February 15 2013, George Zimmerman's brother appeared on an episode of the television show "Real Time with Bill Maher" to exonerate his brother. He did so on the basis that his brother, as a Latino, was not capable of racism because he and his family were not only descendants of slaves but were also victims of and sensitive to anti-Latino racism. In an age of "colorblindness" that seeks to put a history of anti-Black violence under constant erasure, we have to be very clear that the case of Trayvon Martin is not simply about racism. Instead we must view it in the context of a history of anti-Black violence in the US that is very long and continues to be incredibly pervasive. In order to fully understand the ways in which anti-Black violence has been and continues to be a fixed component of American life, even in an era of "colorblindness," it is necessary to consider the ways in which visual culture helps to create an ideological environment that can transform an unarmed, baby-faced teenage boy into a criminal so dangerous that his mere presence justifies the use of deadly force.
Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Mar 12, 2020
Journal of African American History, 2009
We should be careful about using those terms that might turn our friends off. The terms "fag... more We should be careful about using those terms that might turn our friends off. The terms "faggot" and "punk" should be deleted from our vocabulary, and especially we should not attach names normally designed for homosexuals to men who are enemies of the people, such as Richard Nixon and John Mitchell. Homosexuals are not enemies of the people. --Huey P. Newton (1970) I behaved like a prisoner of love. --Jean Genet (1981) French writer Jean Genet revealed in a 1975 interview with German writer Hubert Fichte, "I could only feel at home among people oppressed by color or factions in revolt against whites. Maybe I'm a black who's white or pink, but still black." Apparently, Genet was echoing the views of a generation of elite white intellectuals and artists who articulated a revolutionary subjectivity by identifying with the liberation struggles of oppressed people of African descent around the world. (1) Actors, artists, and intellectuals such as Jean Seberg, Marlon Brando. Bert Schneider, Jean Genet, Leonard Bernstein, Agnes Varda, Jean Paul Sartre, Romain Gary, and political radicals such as Ulrike Meinhof of Germany's Red Army Faction, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin of the Yippies, and Bernardine Dohrn of the Weather Underground all proclaimed an affinity for and affiliation with the Black Panther Party (BPP) and saw the Panthers as providing important models not only for political and social change, but for profound personal transformations. The Black Panthers became masters at creating a radical visual and discursive language of affiliation and identification that expressed the need for personal involvement in liberatory social and political change. In September 1970 BPP Chairman Huey P. Newton declared at the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention that "homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in society. They might be the most oppressed people in society ... maybe a homosexual could be the most revolutionary." (2) Newton was attesting to the complexities that the Panther model of identification articulated as both a theory and praxis of revolutionary self-making. It is impossible to attribute the widespread appeal of the Black Panther Party to non-African Americans, women, and sexual minorities to the caricatures found in many contemporary accounts that embody a simple phallocentric masculinity and a repository of reductionist racial politics. This essay examines the ways the models of identification offered by the Black Panther Party created and provoked a radical affiliation among people as far removed from the African American struggle as the openly gay literary artist Jean Genet and Hollywood actress Jean Seberg. It asserts that the Black Panther Party's discourse of affiliation and identification created a space within radical political discourse for gender and sexual outsiders to rearticulate themselves discursively as empowered by their outsider status and association with "revolutionaries." The Black Panther Party differed from other contemporaneous radical political formations of the Black Power era because the leadership was able to promote the empowerment of African Americans while articulating a vision of radical political possibility and change that included the "refiguring of identity" across a broad spectrum of political, gender, and sexual categories. Black Panther iconography relied on the models of affiliation and identification reflected in the "vanguard model of political activism" proposed by Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Guerilla Warfare and later cogently rearticulated by Regis Debray in Revolution within the Revolution? Armed Struggle and Political Struggle in Latin America. (3) In Guerilla Warfare Che Guevara used the example of the Cuban Revolution to demonstrate the ways in which a small group of revolutionaries could successfully foment revolution in the face of the challenges posed in facing off against a large state-sponsored, professionally trained army. …
Journal of Asian American Studies, 2002
The American Historical Review, 2002
Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures, 2021
This essay will explore the ways in which African American visual culture has attempted to negoti... more This essay will explore the ways in which African American visual culture has attempted to negotiate criminalization and the current situation of what Richard Iton rightfully characterizes as “hyperincarceration.” It will explore the ways in which contemporary African American visual culture is engaged in negotiating between the literal material realities and consequences of mass incarceration and aesthetic constructions of violence. While mass incarceration is increasingly becoming understood as “the New Jim Crow” for African American political organizing, Black criminality has become the key lens through which questions of masculinity, class exclusion, gender, and selfhood get negotiated in African American visual culture. This essay will argue that the “subtext of ongoing Black captivity” is the pretext for much of what drives Black action genres and African American representation in general as a key signifier of a racialized identity and as an indicator of a Black subjectivity ...
American Literature, 2012
This essay will explore the ways in which African American visual culture has attempted to negoti... more This essay will explore the ways in which African American visual culture has attempted to negotiate criminalization and the current situation of what Richard Iton rightfully characterizes as "hyperincarceration." It will explore the ways in which contemporary African American visual culture is engaged in negotiating between the literal material realities and consequences of mass incarceration and aesthetic constructions of violence. While mass incarceration is increasingly becoming understood as "the New Jim Crow" for African American political organizing, Black criminality has become the key lens through which questions of masculinity, class exclusion, gender, and selfhood get negotiated in African American visual culture. This essay will argue that the "subtext of ongoing Black captivity" is the pretext for much of what drives Black action genres and African American representation in general as a key signifier of a racialized identity and as an indicator of a Black subjectivity fraught with complexities of non-belonging.