Is God Is ½

I feel certain that a decade ago, even less, it would have been inconceivable that an Australian theatre company – especially a major one – would mount a play like this: a story about African-Americans, performed by actors of the African diaspora. Is God Is marks an important milestone in local theatre’s growing, though long overdue diversity (how I...

Who is Busta Rhymes? American rapper who got the BET Lifetime Achievement Award for 2023

Busta Rhymes was awarded the BET Lifetime Achievement Award for 2023, on receiving the award he became emotional and got teary eyed during the speech. We take a look at who Busta Rhymes is and what the BET Awards are all about.Busta Rhymes, born Trevor George Smith Jr. on May 20, 1972, in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, is...

Is pluralism dead?

G overning a society of diverse religious, racial and political backgrounds has been an American ideal since the Rhode Island Charter was granted 360 years ago. Our political and legal institutions are designed to achieve that utopia of pluralism. But from the beginning of the American experiment, it has been messy finding that pluralistic sweet spot as political, religious...

When Making Art Means Leaving the United States

In the June 1940 issue of The Atlantic, the iconoclastic Black American author Richard Wright responded to a review of his recently published novel, Native Son, that had appeared in this magazine the month prior. Wright’s rebuttal, titled “I Bite the Hand That Feeds Me,” took his reviewer to task for a great many critical misreadings, most involving his...