The Language Lane

I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to eulogize Andrew Vachss, my brother, mentor, and biggest supporter for more than 50 years, who...

Seems the Color Purple movie is a quiet staple of holiday-season television. Many see it as an inspirational story of a journey to...

While Coop and I were talking about my recent post on the Class of 1953, we mentioned several New York City backcourt men we admired back...

“Wonder how Rittenhouse gon do with the whole Stevie thing?” “Semple, you know I try to understand you the best that I can. But I am...

I never tire of teaching Their Eyes Were Watching God because I’m always interested in characters who emerge from relative voicelessness...

I start by apologizing to my good friends Glenn Cooper and the late Leroy Charles. Both were born in 1953 and were very good high school...

To illustrate the point of textual conversations in American literature, I had students read Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark:...

As we know, somebody will always come to your party, eat up as much food as possible, kill all the liquor, and then tell you how you...

Semple hadn’t talked to his good friend in a while. Texting felt too clumsy, so he went old-school and called him on the phone, land line...

I mentioned in the last post that I once commented about the need for a literary movement for Larry Holmes. I thought those remarks, made...

As Manny Pacquiao nears the end of his boxing career, we are hearing the story of his greatness more and more. Hype, after all, is what...

When Leroy Howard Dewer, Jr. hit Senior Lieutenant Richard Maroney with a two-piece in A yard at Attica Penitentiary on the afternoon of...

Semple was perplexed as he sat on Boyd’s sofa engaged in the news streaming from the flat screen on the wall. He had not tried to focus...

After a wait of more than three decades, we have a new installment of Ishmael Reed’s The Terribles. Long intended to be a trilogy, if my...

Junior Boyd approached Semple, sitting in a familiar spot on the park bench, with excitement, “I just heard that the Cleveland Indians...

“Perhaps the black intellectual we still have the most to learn from is David Walker.” This perhaps is the pivotal statement in Jesse...

Next month, Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins, will release The Minister Primarily, a novel by John Oliver Killens. The manuscript...

“Wait, Junior Boyd. You’re fading out. You must be moving around. Oh, that’s better. Watch the playoff game with y’all? That’s kinda...

Every knowledgeable boxing fan has Sugar Ray Robinson rated among the top 5 boxers who ever competed. Many consider him, pound for pound,...

My introduction to the energetic, charismatic wordsmith DMX was in the winter of 1998. I, like many others, became familiar with him from...