Forgotten Readers -- ep. by Howard Rambsy II

A brief take on the often-overlooked identity of collegiate Black men as readers, highlighting their engagement with African American literature and their vital place in reading culture.

Written by Howard Rambsy II

Read by Kassandra Timm

Transcript

 Every few years, the first-semester collegiate Black men at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville enrolled in an African American literature course are prompted to respond to a question about the various identities that they occupy. They respond noting that they are students. They say they are athletes. Video gamers. Movie lovers. Hip-hop fans. Business majors. Engineering majors. And so on. It’s always a long list, but one identity almost always gets overlooked and forgotten.

You’re listening to Remarkable Receptions — a podcast about the reach and circulation of African American literary art and more.

“If we are to gain further access to and understanding of the literate and literary practices of African Americans, we must be willing to look in new directions at various reading cultures that existed in Black communities.” —Elizabeth McHenry, from her book Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies.

Collegiate Black men identify as brothers and sons; and as students and leaders. But somehow the identities that young Black men forget to mention, and the identity many others forget to mention about them, is that they are readers. Young Black men who take African American literature courses their first year of college and beyond are poetry readers. They are fiction readers. They read essays and short stories; they read speeches and comic books and graphic novels. 

They also engage a variety of authors, including Frederick Douglass, Toni Morrison, Margaret Walker, Amiri Baraka, Colson Whitehead, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, to name just a few. When we take Black men’s identities as readers into account, we begin to see them as information seeks, interpreters, analysts, and cultural participants.

Too often, collegiate Black men occupy the role of forgotten readers. Their interests and reading habits are overlooked. Their contributions are downplayed, and their perspectives are ignored.

In her research on forgotten readers, scholar Elizabeth McHenry documented and analyzed overlooked African American literary societies. She recovered the legacies of these readers and revealed how their collective practices sustained a vibrant reading culture that shaped Black intellectual life. We might apply some of those lessons to remember the importance of contemporary readers.

By shining a light on collegiate Black men as readers and taking their reading practices into consideration, we can expand the stories of how African American literature circulates and receives remarkable, if sometimes forgotten, receptions.

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This episode was written by Howard Rambsy, edited by Elizabeth Cali, and read by me, Kassandra Timm.

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