Wanda's Picks

1. We are joined by the erudite playwright, musician, and scholar Ishmael Reed, Carla Blank, director, and an illustrious cast tospeak about The Shine Challenge online at The Nuyorican Poetry Cafe in New York. Reservations and further information can be found at www.nuyorican.org Reed says:  "In my grandmother’s brother’s house, the only painting on the wall was that of the Titanic. The sinking of the Titanic challenged the boasts of white supremacy. From the collective imagination of the Negro streets came the “toast” of “Shine,” who delivers a warning to the first- class passengers that the ship, thought to be invincible, was taking water. One might consider Shine to be the grassroots nomination for a member of the Black prophetic tradition." Ishmael Reed has lengthened the 40 or so lines of the typical Shine rap into a 100-page script in which he expands on the issues addressed in the original toast: race, class, immigration, engineering, and Edwardian morality by putting Shine on trial, in which h