I Don’t Like the Blues: Race, Place, and the Backbeat of Black Life
Document Type
Video
Publication Date
3-31-2021
Abstract
In the last six years, B. Brian Foster has talked with hundreds of Black Mississippians about race, the blues, politics, memory, community, and more. In this talk, he shares with us some of what they’ve shared with him, and he considers what it all might mean both now and for the future. Some of that work is included in his new book, I Don’t Like the Blues: Race, Place, and the Backbeat of Black Life, in which he considers the value of non-affirming sensibilities like pessimism, frustration, and exhaustion for how we think about Black identity and lived experience.
B. Brian Foster is a writer and storyteller from Mississippi. He earned his PhD in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and currently works as assistant professor of sociology and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. Foster also serves as coeditor of the journal Sociology of Race and Ethnicity and is director of the Mississippi Hill Country Oral History Collective.
Zaire Love joined Foster in this conversation about his book. Zaire Love is a multi-disciplinary artist and award-winning filmmaker from Memphis, Tennessee. Love recently graduated with an MFA in Documentary Expression from the University of Mississippi and recently accepted a new position as the Southern Foodways Alliance’s Pihakis Filmmaker. Her mission is to honor, amplify, and archive the stories and voices of the Black South.
To learn more about the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the SouthTalks series, please visit the Center's website.
Relational Format
video recording
Recommended Citation
Foster, B. Brian; Love, Zaire; and Thomas, Afton, "I Don’t Like the Blues: Race, Place, and the Backbeat of Black Life" (2021). SouthTalks. 13.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/southtalks/13