When Ibram X. Kendi, the award-winning author and historian, approached TIME with the idea to partner on a special project declaring the Black Renaissance, the only question was where to begin. His argument was undeniable: that the past six years or so have amounted to a new creative renaissance, defined and led by Black artists. So many of the works that have captured the nation's attention in recent memory—the books, movies, plays, songs, albums, poems, television shows and works of fashion and visual art—fall under the umbrella of this new renaissance. Kendi ties this surge of creativity to that of Black artists dating back to the 1920s—when Alain Locke wrote his landmark essay marking the Harlem Renaissance in the magazine Survey Graphic. As he writes in an essay introducing the project, "If the Harlem Renaissance stirred Black people to see themselves, if the Black Arts Movement stirred Black people to love themselves, then the Black Renaissance is stirring Black people to be themselves. Totally. Unapologetically. Freely." As we drew near to the end of creating this project, a new artist of the renaissance vaulted onto the scene: 22-year-old poet Amanda Gorman, who stole the show at President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris' Inauguration on Jan. 20. The power of her words shook the nation to attention, and former First Lady Michelle Obama agreed to interview her for the issue. Their conversation is wide-ranging, covering the intersection of poetry and activism and the pressures Black women face in the spotlight. Elsewhere in the package, a group of leading novelists—Brit Bennett, Jasmine Guillory and Jacqueline Woodson—sit down with moderator and writer Rebecca Carroll to talk about the importance of fiction and what it has been like since great numbers of white readers, following the racial reckoning of 2020, took a sudden interest in their work. Music journalist and Kendrick Lamar biographer Marcus J. Moore takes a step back to look at the phenomenal musical releases by Black artists in 2016, from Solange to Rihanna to Frank Ocean, and the way their meditative sounds and personal lyrics became a form of protest in a society that consistently denies Black humanity. TIME reporters Josiah Bates and Andrew R. Chow dig into efforts by Black creators, like director Shaka King of the new drama Judas and the Black Messiah, to correct Hollywood's crater-sized gaps in telling chapters of Black history. An esteemed group of creators of this Renaissance, including Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage, Oscar-nominated director Ava DuVernay and National Book Award-winning novelist Jesmyn Ward, help curate a list of its 25 defining works. And in a closing essay, author and screenwriter Chad Sanders writes that as the demand for Black stories across all disciplines has increased in recent years, so too has the burden on the creators given the opportunities to tell them. As Kendi writes, "Our plays, portraits, films, shows, books, music, essays, podcasts and art are growing in popularity—are emancipating the American consciousness, and banging on the door of the classical canon." We hope you will draw inspiration from this new canon—one whose influence, whose future, knows no bounds. |
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