SPORTS
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AUGUST 12 – AUGUST 18, 2016
STOJ
GOLDEN MOMENTS
FROM THE 2016 OLYMPICS
BRIAN PETERSON/MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE/TNS
The “Final Five” – Alexandra Raisman, Madison Kocian, Lauren Hernandez, Simone Biles and Gabby Douglas. Michael Phelps swims to a gold medal in the men’s 200m Butterfly at the Olympic Aquatic Stadium on Tuesday. ROBERT GAUTHIER/LOS ANGELES TIMES/ TNS
ROBERT GAUTHIER/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS
Serena Williams competes against Daria Gavrilova of Australia in the first round of the women’s tennis singles tournament at the Olympic Tennis Centre on Aug. 7.
FLORIDA COMMUNITY CALENDAR Tampa: The Children’s Movement of Florida will host a forum featuring candidates for Florida Senate District 19 on Aug. 23 at 6 p.m. at Robert W. Saunders Library, 1505 N. Nebraska Ave. Miami Gardens: An Orange Bowl Family Fun & Fit Day is set for Aug. 13 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Betty T. Ferguson Recreational Complex, 3000 NW 199th St. It will include free haircuts, backpacks, school supplies and health screenings. St. Petersburg: Jill Scott takes the Mahaffey Theater stage on Sept. 1. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Jacksonville: A-Train Live: The Experience with Rodney Perry makes a stop at the Ritz Theatre & Museum on Aug. 19. Orlando: Man in the Mirror: The Ultimate Michael Jackson Tribute Band performs Aug. 19 at House of Blues Orlando for a 7 p.m. show. Miami: Drake’s Summer Sixteen Tour, which features Future, makes an Aug. 30 stop at the AmericanAirlines Arena.
Jacksonville: Aaron Bing performs Aug. 14 at the Times Union Center for the Performing Arts. Orlando: Dru Hill and Lyfe Jennings perform Aug. 27 at House of Blues Orlando for a 7 p.m. show. Jacksonville: Jill Scott takes the stage Aug. 28 at the Times Union Center for the Performing Arts and Aug. 30 at the Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater in Miami Beach.
The Bad Boy Family Reunion is coming to AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami on Sept. 10 and Tampa’s Amalie Arena on Sept. 11. Performers will include Puff Daddy, Faith Evans, Lil Kim, Mase, 112, Total, Carl Thomas, The Lox and French Montana.
DMX
Fort Lauderdale: The Keb’ Mo’ Band will perform Sept. 22 at the Parker Playhouse.
A Kings & Queens of Hip Hop concert is Aug. 27 at the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena. Artists will include DMX, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Trina and Scarface.
Miami Beach: Leon Bridges will perform Sept. 13 at the Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater. Jacksonville: Catch Boney James on Aug. 18 at the Florida Theatre Jacksonville The show is at 8 p.m. Hollywood: Seal performs Aug. 18 at Hard Rock Live. The show starts at 8 p.m. Jacksonville: Kenny G stops by the Florida Theatre Jacksonville on Sept. 1 for an 8 p.m. show. Miami: Kanye West’s The Saint Pablo Tour stops at AmericanAirlines Arena on Sept. 16.
New generation speaks in ‘Fire This Time’ BY DR. GLENN ALTSCHULER SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA COURIER
Not long after George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, Jesmyn Ward – the author of the novels “Where the Line Bleeds’’ and “Salvage the Bones,’’ and a memoir, “Men We Reaped’’ – decided to enlist the writers of her generation to address the specters of race and history in Jesmyn America, as Ward James Baldwin had with “The Fire Next Time’’ in 1963. Ward envisioned a collection of essays, memoirs, and poems that deal with the past, in a section called “legacy,” with the present, in a section called “reckoning,” and with the future, in a section called “jubilee.” The result, is not “as tidy” as Ward thought it would be. The 18 contributions in “The Fire This Time’’ range widely, from a “defense” of the husband of Phillis Wheatley, the 18th-century AfricanAmerican poet; to an analysis of murals protesting police harassment, to reflections on fatherhood; to the art of storytelling (and “the stank from whence black Southern life, love
CARL THOMAS
BOOK REVIEW Review of “The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race.’’ Edited by Jesmyn Ward. Scribner. 226 pages $25. and labor came”); and to the changing forms of White rage.
The subtle and overt Taken as a whole, “The Fire Next Time’’ serves as a powerful reminder that meaningful discussions about Black lives mattering must “acknowledge the plantation, must unfold white sheets, and the black diaspora.” They must reckon with the fact that Garnette Cadogan, a visiting scholar at The Institute for Advanced Knowledge at New York University (who is
now writing a book about walking), was handcuffed by the New Orleans police when he was a student because he waved hello to them – and badgered by the cops in New York City because he was jogging to the subway at Columbus Circle. And, as Carol Anderson, a professor at Emory University, indicates, discussions must address the more subtle, less overtly racist manifestations of White rage that take the form of reductions in local, state, and federal government employment, where there is less discrimination in hiring, retention, and pay; voter suppression initiatives; stand-yourground laws; and a mortgage foreclosure crisis that hit Black Americans harder than any other group in the United States.
Little optimism As it documents that African-American intellectuals and activists are finding a collective voice, Ward acknowledges that the volume also testifies to the exhaustion of many Blacks, who are tired of teaching their kids “that America sees them as less, that she just might kill them,” and who feel futile “in the face of this ever-present danger.” It is understandable, it seems to me, that expressions of optimism about the future are rare in “The Fire This Time.’’ “Of course you can see why anyone would want to be black; being black is fun,” the poet Kevin Young
CASEY J
Tickets are on sale for the Festival of Praise on Nov. 30 at the Pompano Beach Amphitheater. Performers include Fred Hammond, Pastor Hezekiah Walker, Israel Houghton, Karen Clark Sheard, Regina Belle and Casey J.
writes. “Don’t tell anybody.” Claudia Rankine, a professor of English at the University of Southern California, suggests that real change will not come until and unless there is a “rerouting of interior belief,” but implies that at the moment “a lack of feeling for another” reduces the likelihood of “a sustained state of national mourning for black lives.”
Danticat’s confession In the last essay in “The Fire This Time,’’ Edwidge Danticat, a Haitian-born writer of fiction and nonfiction for adults and children, confesses that she wants to look forward, to have a dream, to tell her daughters that they have the power to at least try to change things, “that their crowns have already been bought and paid for and that all they have to do is
put them on their heads.” But, she writes, the world, and people who are hostile and violent “for reasons that have nothing to do with your beauty, your humor or your grace, but only the color of your skin…keep tripping me up.”
Dr. Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.