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

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.

A world reimagined in Black

By placing Kwame Nkrumah at the center of a global Black political network, Howard W. French reveals how the promise of pan-African emancipation was narrowed—and what its failure still costs Africa and the diaspora.

Securing Nigeria

Nigeria’s insecurity cannot be solved by foreign airstrikes or a failing state, but by rebuilding democratic, community-rooted systems of collective self-defense.

Empire’s middlemen

From Portuguese Goa to colonial Kampala, Mahmood Mamdani’s latest book shows how India became an instrument of empire, and a scapegoat in its aftermath.

À qui s’adresse la CAN ?

Entre le coût du transport aérien, les régimes de visas, la culture télévisuelle et l’exclusion de classe, le problème de l’affluence à la CAN est structurel — et non le signe d’un manque de passion des supporters.

Lions in the rain

The 2025 AFCON final between Senegal and Morocco was a dramatic spectacle that tested the limits of the match and the crowd, until a defining moment held everything together.