Kevin Powell is widely considered one of America's most important voices
in these early years of the 21st century. Legendary feminist Gloria Steinem
asserts that "as a charismatic speaker, leader, and a very good writer, Kevin
Powell has the courage...to be fully human, and this will bring the deepest
revolution of all." Internationally acclaimed scholar and social critic
Dr. Michael Eric Dyson has called Powell "a mighty wind of fresh air." And
of Kevin Powell the writer
asha bandele says When you consider the
intelligence and breadth of Kevin Powell's writing and activism, you come to the
conclusion that there may be no better spokesperson and representative for a
generation that has too long been counted out.
Additionally, Powell is at work on his next collection of essays, Open Letters To America (2009), his long-awaited childhood memoir, My Own Private Ghetto (2011), and The Kevin Powell Reader (2012), which will gather the first twenty-five years of his writings and speeches. Indeed, Kevin has written numerous essays, articles, and reviews through the years for publications such as Esquire, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Essence, Rolling Stone, The Amsterdam News, huffingtonpost.com, and Vibe, where he was a founding staff member and served as a senior writer, interviewing and profiling, among many others, General Colin Powell and the late Tupac Shakur. Most recently Powell has been a Writing Fellow for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, as well as a Phelps Stokes Fund Senior Fellow.
A gifted and highly sought after public speaker, Powell has lectured on multiculturalism, building corporate responsibility, American and Black American history, the life of Dr. King, civil rights, American politics and civic engagement, sexism from a male perspective, leadership, social activism, the state of hiphop, redefining American manhood, and being Black and male in America, among other topics, at hundreds of colleges and universities, community centers, prisons, religious institutions, conferences, and festivals, as well as in corporate settings. Furthermore, Kevin Powell routinely offers his insights on a variety of matters, to TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, and internet outlets in America, and abroad.
A fixture on the pop culture landscape the past several years, Powell was a cast member on the first season of MTV's The Real World; hosted and produced programming for HBO and BET; written a screenplay; hosted and wrote an award-winning MTV documentary about post-riot Los Angeles; and was the Guest Curator of the Brooklyn Museum of Art's Hip-Hop Nation: Roots, Rhymes, and Rage which originated at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, and of which Powell was the exhibition consultant the first major exhibit in America on the history of hiphop.
Of paramount importance to Kevin Powell, however, is his activism. He has been a leader in some form or fashion for over twenty years, dating back to his days as a teenager at Rutgers University. He was a participant in the student-led anti-apartheid movement, the drive to end racism in South Africa. He has been at the forefront of police brutality and racial bias cases. He has worked for years around voting rights. Powell is one of the most prominent voices in the hiphop generation, and he has organized a number of concerts, mc battles, rallies, and forums that stress the use of hiphop as a tool for social change. As a result of his own past personal struggles, contradictions, growth, and a commitment to therapy and healing, Kevin has become a very outspoken critic of violence against women and girls, of violence in general, and he has been at the forefront of the movement to redefine American manhood away from sexism and violence. Powell also plays a key role in the Black male development arena, having produced, the past few years, among other things, a 10-city State of Black Men Tour, numerous Black male think tank sessions, and Black and Male in America, a 3-Day national conference (www.blackandmaleinamerica.org). Powell has taught, mentored, and counseled in schools, camps, prisons, and on the streets of urban America. He produces an annual holiday party and clothing drive every December in New York City that benefits the needy. And Powell was a central figure in Gulf Coast disaster relief efforts, facilitating the delivery of goods and services to the affected regions, and being a cofounder of Katrina on the Ground, an initiative that sent over 700 college students to work in the devastated region.
Of his life work Kevin Powell says, simply, "My life-calling is to be a servant for the people, period. Money, fame, status, personal achievements, and all that means very little to me when pain and suffering are still real on this planet. I am interested in the powerless becoming powerful.
Barack
Obama, Ronald Reagan, and The Ghost of Dr. King: Blogs and Essays
Click to order via
Amazon
Paperback: 230 pages
Publisher: Lulu.com (May 1, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1105414094
ISBN-13: 978-1105414091
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, and The Ghost of Dr. King, Kevin Powell’s
11th book and his latest collection of blogs and essays on American
politics and pop culture, is a stunning manifesto for our times. That is
because Powell is one of the most courageous and distinctive voices in
America today. Be it violence against women and girls or the Trayvon
Martin tragedy, Occupy Wall Street or the Penn State sex scandal, The
Super Bowl or leadership in America, Powell is unafraid to touch any
controversial social issue. Thus what we have in Kevin Powell’s Barack
Obama, Ronald Reagan, and The Ghost of Dr. King are 22 raw, unfiltered
blogs and essays, intent on not just exposing, but understanding, all
the while building bridges of dialogue — with ourselves, and with our
America.
Open
Letters to America: Essays by Kevin Powell
Click to order via
Amazon
Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: Soft Skull Press (November 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1593762143
ISBN-13: 978-1593762148
After eight years of George Bush's America, we are at a
critical juncture in our nation's history, when we can put forth a new
and bolder kind of democracy. Just as the Civil Rights Movement opened
the doors for blacks and other people of color, for women, for the LGBT
community, the rise of
Barack Obama to the presidency and the post-Bush society we now
encounter opens new possibilities for our democracy. And it also
prompts us to re-examine from a new perspective the old issues around
poverty, class, gender, and race. In other words, can the progressive
multicultural coalition Barack Obama put together to win the presidency
be translated into a progressive multicultural movement?
Open Letters to America is writer Kevin Powell's celebration of
the sudden, mass political engagement of America's youth, and Americans
in general; his thoughts in the aftermath of Obama's magical and
historic presidential campaign; and his open acknowledgment that if
21st-century America is going to be the great world democracy it
promises to be, it will be Generations X and Y that make it so.
No Sleep Till Brooklyn:
New and Selected Poems
Click to order via
Amazon
aperback: 112 pages
Publisher: Soft Skull Press (March 10, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0979663695
ISBN-13: 978-0979663697
Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
Written between 1989 and 2008, the poems in Kevin Powell's powerful new collection encompass everything from his early role as a renowned slam poet (and original cast member of MTV's Real World) to his current incarnation as a poet operating away from the scene. Within this rich tapestry of musings, confession, and introspection, Powell weaves issues like racism, black self-hatred, and gender violence with his own anguished revelations about sex, love, and misogyny. Sampling from the personal and the political, Powell reshapes them into a provocative soundtrack for the times.
Paperback: 272 pages "This book may save your life."
--Michael
Eric Dyson The Black Male Handbook is a
collection of essays for Black males on surviving, living, and winning.
Kevin Powell taps into the social and political climate rising in the
Black community, particularly as it relates to Black males. This is a
must-have book, not only for Black male readers, but the women who
befriend, parent, partner, and love them.
Paperback: 160 pages
"The enlightening essays in Someday We'll All Be Free are an interpretive
collage of tragic events in American life that are redefining our debates about
civil liberties and the unspoken expendability of the poor." --The Washington Post
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast region of the United States in late
August 2005, writer and activist Kevin Powell knew he had to do something. He
personally traveled to New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Houston to interview and
help survivors. He organized large truck shipments to the affected region by
staging two major New York City benefits in the span of three months. He
co-created Katrina on the Ground, which sent over 700 young people, mostly
college students, to the devastated area as an alternative Spring Break in March
2006. And Powell wrote the bulk of his seventh book, Someday We'll All Be Free,
in the midst of this national tragedy, including the third and final essay, A
Psalm for New Orleans.
ISBN: 0609810448
Who's Gonna Take The Weight? features
three mind-jolting essays: In "The Breakdown" Powell revisits the dark, suicidal
days of his life after being fired from Vibe magazine in 1996. What begins as a
critical self-reflection on what led to his personal demise expands into
scorching candor as Powell tears apart the notions of integration and
multiculturalism, celebrity and success, and power in America.
In "Confessions Of A Recovering
Misogynist" Powell explores how manhood is constructed in this country, through
the lens of his own personal saga, from his tumultuous relationship with his
mother and other women, to a recognition that manhood based on domination and
violence is a recipe for destruction, of women, and of men.
And in the final essay, "What Is A Man?"
Powell presents a Herculean meditation on the life and times of the late Tupac
Shakur, on Black fathers and Black sons (the Civil Rights generation and the
hiphop generation), on Black leadership, on
Anguished, funny, sad, honest, and full
of hope and love, Who's Gonna Take The Weight? reveals both astonishing clarity
of vision and an unsettling emotional immediacy. Written 100 years after W.E.B.
DuBois published the historic The Souls of Black Folk and 40 years after James
Baldwin penned the classic The Fire Next Time, Kevin Powell's Who's Gonna Take
The Weight? bears witness to the burning issues that have accompanied us on our
journey into the 21st century.
Kevin Powell, Editor Format: Hardcover, 470pp.
Read more about the contributors to this fantastic volume of work
The best work of hip-hop generation writers
captured in a single volume
From fiction writers, poets, journalists, and
commentators, this absorbing anthology captures, for the first time, the new
school of black writing, including established and award-winning authors like
Junot Diaz, Edwidge Danticat, Danyel Smith, and Paul
Beatty, as well as emerging voices from around the world. In addition to showing
today's literary flowering, Step Into A World provides a window into the crucial
issues of contemporary black life, including racial and sexual identity,
post-civil rights politics, and hip-hop culture. Compiled by critically
acclaimed poet, journalist, and essayist Kevin Powell, this groundbreaking book
is a revelation.
Kevin Powell (Brooklyn, NY) is a critically
acclaimed poet, journalist, and essayist. He is the former senior editor for
Vibe, and has been published in dozens of periodicals, including the New York
Times, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, George, Essence, and One World.
"Kevin Powell is pushing to bring, as he has
so brilliantly done before, the voices of his generation: the concerns, the
cares, the fears, and the fearlessness. Step into a World is a kaleidoscope into
the world not bound by artificial constructs like nation. John Coltrane recorded
‘Giant Steps,’ which is a riff on the sight and sounds in his muse. Powell
plays the computer with equal astuteness." –Nikki
Giovanni
"Those of us who pay attention were aware
that the younger generation of blackwriters was being smothered by the
anointment of talented tenth Divas and Divuses, and their commercial
accommodationist ‘Fourth Renaissance. ’This anthology is indeed a
breakthrough! It combines the boldness and daring of hip-hop with the
intellectual keenness of a Michele Wallace or a Clyde Taylor." –Ishmael
Reed
"In a culture where videos, the Internet,
and other high-tech communication is being consumed like the latest
mind-altering drug, how does great literature grow and survive? These writers
will answer that all-important question. This anthology provides a clue, a hint,
as to where we might be going. They are resisting all this vacant, empty-minded
nothingness. Read them. Listen to them. If you don’t, you do so at your
peril." –Quincy Troupe
Publisher: Random House, Incorporated "Here is a book to read and a writer to watch.
Obviously Kevin Powell has the talent to see and the power to say. He truly keeps it
real" ~Maya Angelou In Keepin' It Real, writer, poet, and cultural critic Kevin
Powell puts both himself and society under a microscope and creates a searingly honest
collection that is both powerful and disturbing. Powell's letters and reflections take us
on the dizzying tight-rope walk between two worlds. From the poverty and misery of his New
Jersey childhood to the excesses and successes of his mercurial rise to prominence, it is
a life lived on the cutting edge. Within this rich weave of musings, confession, and
sometimes painful introspection, Powell confronts such issues as racism, black
self-hatred, gender violence in the nineties, and his own anguished revelations about sex,
love, and misogyny. He also explores the meaning and myths of the Million Man March and
the influential and threatening presence of rap music.
Author: Kevin Powell, Ras Baraka
(Editor) 'In The Tradition is a provocative collection of works by
some of America's most articulate young writers. Covering subjects which range from
politics to love, this book crystallizes for its readers that the younger generation of
Black poets and fiction writers have a serious grasp of the perils that beset their lives,
their families and friends, their community-the writing is strong intelligent and mature.
Author: Kevin Powell Driven by hip-hop music, popular culture, national and
global events, and the specifics of his own life, Kevin Powell's voice is one of the
boldest and brightest in the 1990's poetry renaissance. Passionate and witty, Powell's
poetry is filled with fly girls and lost loves, grandmothers and absent fathers. His
poetry conveys the hope, anger and fear of a generation. Related Links
Kevin Powell Elsewhere on AALBC.com An Interview w/ Kevin Powell on Hip Hop, Race & Politics
Behind Those Books, which is a thought Provoking
Documentary Tackling Societal Ills Through Literature
The film was Written & Produced by: Kaven Brown & Edited & Directed by:
Visit
http://aalbc.it/behindthosebooks to learn more
The
Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life
Click to order via
Amazon
Publisher: Atria (September 9, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1416592245
ISBN-13: 978-1416592242
The Black Male Handbook answers a collective hunger for new direction,
fresh solutions to old problems, and a different kind of conversation --
man-to-man and with Black male voices, all of the hiphop generation. The
book tackles issues related to political, practical, cultural, and
spiritual matters, and ending violence against women and girls.
The book also features an appendix filled with useful readings, advice,
and resources. The Black Male Handbook is a blueprint for those aspiring
to thrive against the odds in America today.
Someday
We'll All Be Free
Click to order via Amazon
Publisher: Soft Skull Press (August 28, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN: 1933368578
This is the hardest book I've ever written, Powell says, because it was born
in the midst of a great catastrophe, and in the aftermath of that catastrophe,
with little time for me to deal with my own trauma, pain, and sadness around
what happened in New Orleans. But I felt compelled to write because we have to
document this episode in the American journey honestly, with the hope and
determination that it will never happen again.
Using the Katrina calamity as his inspiration for truth-telling, Powell decided
to add a previously unpublished essay about the 2004 presidential election
(Looking for America) and a long meditation on September 11th (September
11th) to Someday We'll All Be Free (the book title comes from the classic Donny
Hathaway song). The result is Powell's most distinguished work to date, three
literary sermons that bring to mind the raw brilliance of James Baldwin, the
iconoclastic musings of Norman Mailer, and the stinging political sobriety of
Joan Didion. While Someday We'll All Be Free is about specific times and
specific situations in American history, these pieces transcend these times and
situations and become a virtual town hall meeting on the enduring quest for
freedom and democracy in America, and on this planet, in these early days of the
21st century. Indeed, these coolly observant essays-essays that tackle difficult
topics like war, terrorism, poverty, the American identity, leadership,
religion, patriotism, and the cooptation of hiphop-firmly establish why Powell
is widely considered one of America's brightest leaders and thinkers.
Who's
Gonna Take the Weight?: Manhood, Race, and Power in America
Click to order via Amazon
Format: Paperback, 160pp
Pub. Date: August 2003
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Edition Description: 1ST
the wins and losses of the Civil Rights era, and on the twisted and tragic Black
male-White male relationship in America, from slavery to Eminem.
My mission at this moment of my life
journey is to rise above the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune; to vaccinate myself against that mental
terrorism germ known as self-hatred, hatred of people who look like me, and the
hatred of individuals or groups irrespective of who they are; and to be a
truth-seeker and a truth-teller, not just for Black people, but for the human
race.
From the Prologue
Step
into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature
Click to order via
Amazon
ISBN: 0471380601
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
Pub. Date: October 2000
Keepin'
It Real: Post-MTV Reflections on Race, Sex, and Politics
Click to order via
Amazon
Date Published: April 1998
Format: Trade Paper
In the
Tradition: An Anthology of Young Black Writers
Click to order via
Amazon
Publisher: Writers & Readers Publishing, Inc.
Date Published: September 1992
Format: Trade Paper
Recognize:
Poems
Click to order via
Amazon
Publisher: Writers & Readers Publishing, Inc.
Date Published: May 1995
Format: Trade Paper
Kevin
Powell is featured in the 2011 documentary film,
Mills Miller
