Jeffrey Wright Reads Walt Whitman

This is from a minute ago, but I had to post it as it features part of my neighborhood. Wright, actor and unassuming Fort Greene, Brooklyn, resident (that’s also my neighborhood) reads his favorite Walt Whitman poem (from his blackberry) in front of the Walt Whitman Houses on Myrtle Avenue in the neighborhood. The reading was for “… a segment from “Works In Progress,” a new TV and online series about storytellers around the world in development from creator Ina Howard Parker.” The series also includes a less dramatic interview with Ismael Beah, the writer from Sierra Leone, at Madiba Restaurant, also a few blocks from my house. BTW, is that it for the series?–Sean Jacobs

Further Reading

Afrobeats after Fela

Wizkid’s dispute with Seun Kuti and the release of his latest EP with Asake highlight the widening gap between Afrobeats’ commercial triumph and Fela Kuti’s political inheritance

Progress is exhausting

Pedro Pinho’s latest film follows a Portuguese engineer in Guinea-Bissau, exposing how empire survives through bureaucracy, intimacy, and the language of “development.”

The rubble of empire

Built by Italian Fascists in 1928, Mogadishu Cathedral was meant to symbolize “peaceful conquest.” Today its ruins force Somalis to confront the uneasy afterlife of colonial power and religious authority.

Atayese

Honored in Yorubaland as “one who repairs the world,” Jesse Jackson’s life bridged civil rights, pan-Africanism, empire, and contradiction—leaving behind a legacy as expansive as it was imperfect.

Bread or Messi?

Angola’s golden jubilee culminated in a multimillion-dollar match against Argentina. The price tag—and the secrecy around it—divided a nation already grappling with inequality.

Visiting Ngara

A redevelopment project in Nairobi’s Ngara district promises revival—but raises deeper questions about capital, memory, and who has the right to shape the city.

Gen Z’s electoral dilemma

Long dismissed as apathetic, Kenya’s youth forced a rupture in 2024. As the 2027 election approaches, their challenge is turning digital rebellion and street protest into political power.