Kevin Powell is widely considered one of America's most important voices in these early years of the 21st century. Legendary feminist Gloria Steinem asserts that "as a charismatic speaker, leader, and a very good writer, Kevin Powell has the courage...to be fully human, and this will bring the deepest revolution of all." Internationally acclaimed scholar and social critic Dr. Michael Eric Dyson has called Powell "a mighty wind of fresh air." And of Kevin Powell the writer asha bandele says When you consider the intelligence and breadth of Kevin Powell's writing and activism, you come to the conclusion that there may be no better spokesperson and representative for a generation that has too long been counted out.

Kevin Powell is an activist, writer, public speaker, pop culture aficionado and, most recently, a 2008 Democratic candidate for Congress in Brooklyn, New York. A product of extreme poverty, welfare, fatherlessness, and a single mother-led household, he is a native of Jersey City, New Jersey and was educated at New Jersey's Rutgers University. Kevin Powell is a longtime resident of Brooklyn, New York, and it is from his base in New York City that Powell has published nine books, including his recent essay title, Someday Well All Be Free (Soft Skull Press). This book is a collection of provocative pieces on freedom, democracy, justice, and race in America, as inspired by Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 presidential election, and September 11th. Besides running for Congress Powell also managed to publish two new books in 2008: No Sleep Till Brooklyn, his second volume of poetry; and The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life, a self-help book geared toward the healing, development, and empowerment of Black men and boys.

Additionally, Powell is at work on his next collection of essays, Open Letters To America (2009), his long-awaited childhood memoir, My Own Private Ghetto (2011), and The Kevin Powell Reader (2012), which will gather the first twenty-five years of his writings and speeches. Indeed, Kevin has written numerous essays, articles, and reviews through the years for publications such as Esquire, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Essence, Rolling Stone, The Amsterdam News, huffingtonpost.com, and Vibe, where he was a founding staff member and served as a senior writer, interviewing and profiling, among many others, General Colin Powell and the late Tupac Shakur. Most recently Powell has been a Writing Fellow for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, as well as a Phelps Stokes Fund Senior Fellow.

A gifted and highly sought after public speaker, Powell has lectured on multiculturalism, building corporate responsibility, American and Black American history, the life of Dr. King, civil rights, American politics and civic engagement, sexism from a male perspective, leadership, social activism, the state of hiphop, redefining American manhood, and being Black and male in America, among other topics, at hundreds of colleges and universities, community centers, prisons, religious institutions, conferences, and festivals, as well as in corporate settings. Furthermore, Kevin Powell routinely offers his insights on a variety of matters, to TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, and internet outlets in America, and abroad.

A fixture on the pop culture landscape the past several years, Powell was a cast member on the first season of MTV's The Real World; hosted and produced programming for HBO and BET; written a screenplay; hosted and wrote an award-winning MTV documentary about post-riot Los Angeles; and was the Guest Curator of the Brooklyn Museum of Art's Hip-Hop Nation: Roots, Rhymes, and Rage which originated at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, and of which Powell was the exhibition consultant the first major exhibit in America on the history of hiphop.

Of paramount importance to Kevin Powell, however, is his activism. He has been a leader in some form or fashion for over twenty years, dating back to his days as a teenager at Rutgers University. He was a participant in the student-led anti-apartheid movement, the drive to end racism in South Africa. He has been at the forefront of police brutality and racial bias cases. He has worked for years around voting rights. Powell is one of the most prominent voices in the hiphop generation, and he has organized a number of concerts, mc battles, rallies, and forums that stress the use of hiphop as a tool for social change. As a result of his own past personal struggles, contradictions, growth, and a commitment to therapy and healing, Kevin has become a very outspoken critic of violence against women and girls, of violence in general, and he has been at the forefront of the movement to redefine American manhood away from sexism and violence. Powell also plays a key role in the Black male development arena, having produced, the past few years, among other things, a 10-city State of Black Men Tour, numerous Black male think tank sessions, and Black and Male in America, a 3-Day national conference (www.blackandmaleinamerica.org). Powell has taught, mentored, and counseled in schools, camps, prisons, and on the streets of urban America. He produces an annual holiday party and clothing drive every December in New York City that benefits the needy. And Powell was a central figure in Gulf Coast disaster relief efforts, facilitating the delivery of goods and services to the affected regions, and being a cofounder of Katrina on the Ground, an initiative that sent over 700 college students to work in the devastated region.

Of his life work Kevin Powell says, simply, "My life-calling is to be a servant for the people, period. Money, fame, status, personal achievements, and all that means very little to me when pain and suffering are still real on this planet. I am interested in the powerless becoming powerful.
 

 

 

Open Letters to America: Essays by Kevin Powell
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Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: Soft Skull Press (November 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1593762143
ISBN-13: 978-1593762148

After eight years of George Bush's America, we are at a critical juncture in our nation's history, when we can put forth a new and bolder kind of democracy. Just as the Civil Rights Movement opened the doors for blacks and other people of color, for women, for the LGBT community, the rise of Barack Obama to the presidency and the post-Bush society we now encounter opens new possibilities for our democracy. And it also prompts us to re-examine from a new perspective the old issues around poverty, class, gender, and race. In other words, can the progressive multicultural coalition Barack Obama put together to win the presidency be translated into a progressive multicultural movement?

Open Letters to America is writer Kevin Powell's celebration of the sudden, mass political engagement of America's youth, and Americans in general; his thoughts in the aftermath of Obama's magical and historic presidential campaign; and his open acknowledgment that if 21st-century America is going to be the great world democracy it promises to be, it will be Generations X and Y that make it so.

 

No Sleep Till Brooklyn: New and Selected Poems
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Paperback: 112 pages
Publisher: Soft Skull Press (March 10, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0979663695
ISBN-13: 978-0979663697
Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches

Written between 1989 and 2008, the poems in Kevin Powell's powerful new collection encompass everything from his early role as a renowned slam poet (and original cast member of MTV's Real World) to his current incarnation as a poet operating away from the scene. Within this rich tapestry of musings, confession, and introspection, Powell weaves issues like racism, black self-hatred, and gender violence with his own anguished revelations about sex, love, and misogyny. Sampling from the personal and the political, Powell reshapes them into a provocative soundtrack for the times.

 

The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life
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Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Atria (September 9, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1416592245
ISBN-13: 978-1416592242

"This book may save your life." --Michael Eric Dyson

The Black Male Handbook is a collection of essays for Black males on surviving, living, and winning. Kevin Powell taps into the social and political climate rising in the Black community, particularly as it relates to Black males. This is a must-have book, not only for Black male readers, but the women who befriend, parent, partner, and love them.

The Black Male Handbook answers a collective hunger for new direction, fresh solutions to old problems, and a different kind of conversation -- man-to-man and with Black male voices, all of the hiphop generation. The book tackles issues related to political, practical, cultural, and spiritual matters, and ending violence against women and girls.

The book also features an appendix filled with useful readings, advice, and resources. The Black Male Handbook is a blueprint for those aspiring to thrive against the odds in America today.

 

Someday We'll All Be Free
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Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: Soft Skull Press (August 28, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN: 1933368578

"The enlightening essays in Someday We'll All Be Free are an interpretive collage of tragic events in American life that are redefining our debates about civil liberties and the unspoken expendability of the poor." --The Washington Post

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast region of the United States in late August 2005, writer and activist Kevin Powell knew he had to do something. He personally traveled to New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Houston to interview and help survivors. He organized large truck shipments to the affected region by staging two major New York City benefits in the span of three months. He co-created Katrina on the Ground, which sent over 700 young people, mostly college students, to the devastated area as an alternative Spring Break in March 2006. And Powell wrote the bulk of his seventh book, Someday We'll All Be Free, in the midst of this national tragedy, including the third and final essay, A Psalm for New Orleans.

This is the hardest book I've ever written, Powell says, because it was born in the midst of a great catastrophe, and in the aftermath of that catastrophe, with little time for me to deal with my own trauma, pain, and sadness around what happened in New Orleans. But I felt compelled to write because we have to document this episode in the American journey honestly, with the hope and determination that it will never happen again.

Using the Katrina calamity as his inspiration for truth-telling, Powell decided to add a previously unpublished essay about the 2004 presidential election (Looking for America) and a long meditation on September 11th (September 11th) to Someday We'll All Be Free (the book title comes from the classic Donny Hathaway song). The result is Powell's most distinguished work to date, three literary sermons that bring to mind the raw brilliance of James Baldwin, the iconoclastic musings of Norman Mailer, and the stinging political sobriety of Joan Didion. While Someday We'll All Be Free is about specific times and specific situations in American history, these pieces transcend these times and situations and become a virtual town hall meeting on the enduring quest for freedom and democracy in America, and on this planet, in these early days of the 21st century. Indeed, these coolly observant essays-essays that tackle difficult topics like war, terrorism, poverty, the American identity, leadership, religion, patriotism, and the cooptation of hiphop-firmly establish why Powell is widely considered one of America's brightest leaders and thinkers.

 

Who's Gonna Take the Weight?: Manhood, Race, and Power in America
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ISBN: 0609810448
Format: Paperback, 160pp
Pub. Date: August 2003
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Edition Description: 1ST

Who's Gonna Take The Weight? features three mind-jolting essays: In "The Breakdown" Powell revisits the dark, suicidal days of his life after being fired from Vibe magazine in 1996. What begins as a critical self-reflection on what led to his personal demise expands into scorching candor as Powell tears apart the notions of integration and multiculturalism, celebrity and success, and power in America.

In "Confessions Of A Recovering Misogynist" Powell explores how manhood is constructed in this country, through the lens of his own personal saga, from his tumultuous relationship with his mother and other women, to a recognition that manhood based on domination and violence is a recipe for destruction, of women, and of men.

And in the final essay, "What Is A Man?" Powell presents a Herculean meditation on the life and times of the late Tupac Shakur, on Black fathers and Black sons (the Civil Rights generation and the hiphop generation), on Black leadership, on
the wins and losses of the Civil Rights era, and on the twisted and tragic Black male-White male relationship in America, from slavery to Eminem.

My mission at this moment of my life journey is to rise above the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune; to vaccinate myself against that mental
terrorism germ known as self-hatred, hatred of people who look like me, and the
hatred of individuals or groups irrespective of who they are; and to be a
truth-seeker and a truth-teller, not just for Black people, but for the human race.
 From the Prologue

Anguished, funny, sad, honest, and full of hope and love, Who's Gonna Take The Weight? reveals both astonishing clarity of vision and an unsettling emotional immediacy. Written 100 years after W.E.B. DuBois published the historic The Souls of Black Folk and 40 years after James Baldwin penned the classic The Fire Next Time, Kevin Powell's Who's Gonna Take The Weight? bears witness to the burning issues that have accompanied us on our journey into the 21st century.

Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature
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Kevin Powell, Editor

Format: Hardcover, 470pp.
ISBN: 0471380601
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
Pub. Date: October  2000

Read more about the contributors to this fantastic volume of work

The best work of hip-hop generation writers captured in a single volume

From fiction writers, poets, journalists, and commentators, this absorbing anthology captures, for the first time, the new school of black writing, including established and award-winning authors like Junot Diaz, Edwidge Danticat, Danyel Smith, and Paul Beatty, as well as emerging voices from around the world. In addition to showing today's literary flowering, Step Into A World provides a window into the crucial issues of contemporary black life, including racial and sexual identity, post-civil rights politics, and hip-hop culture. Compiled by critically acclaimed poet, journalist, and essayist Kevin Powell, this groundbreaking book is a revelation.

Kevin Powell (Brooklyn, NY) is a critically acclaimed poet, journalist, and essayist. He is the former senior editor for Vibe, and has been published in dozens of periodicals, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, George, Essence, and One World.

"Kevin Powell is pushing to bring, as he has so brilliantly done before, the voices of his generation: the concerns, the cares, the fears, and the fearlessness. Step into a World is a kaleidoscope into the world not bound by artificial constructs like nation. John Coltrane recorded ‘Giant Steps,’ which is a riff on the sight and sounds in his muse. Powell plays the computer with equal astuteness." –Nikki Giovanni

"Those of us who pay attention were aware that the younger generation of blackwriters was being smothered by the anointment of talented tenth Divas and Divuses, and their commercial accommodationist ‘Fourth Renaissance. ’This anthology is indeed a breakthrough! It combines the boldness and daring of hip-hop with the intellectual keenness of a Michele Wallace or a Clyde Taylor." –Ishmael Reed

"In a culture where videos, the Internet, and other high-tech communication is being consumed like the latest mind-altering drug, how does great literature grow and survive? These writers will answer that all-important question. This anthology provides a clue, a hint, as to where we might be going. They are resisting all this vacant, empty-minded nothingness. Read them. Listen to them. If you don’t, you do so at your peril." –Quincy Troupe

 

 Keepin' It Real: Post-MTV Reflections on Race, Sex, and Politics
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Publisher:  Random House, Incorporated
Date Published:  April 1998
Format:  Trade Paper

"Here is a book to read and a writer to watch.   Obviously Kevin Powell has the talent to see and the power to say.  He truly keeps it real" ~Maya Angelou

In Keepin' It Real, writer, poet, and cultural critic Kevin Powell puts both himself and society under a microscope and creates a searingly honest collection that is both powerful and disturbing. Powell's letters and reflections take us on the dizzying tight-rope walk between two worlds. From the poverty and misery of his New Jersey childhood to the excesses and successes of his mercurial rise to prominence, it is a life lived on the cutting edge. Within this rich weave of musings, confession, and sometimes painful introspection, Powell confronts such issues as racism, black self-hatred, gender violence in the nineties, and his own anguished revelations about sex, love, and misogyny. He also explores the meaning and myths of the Million Man March and the influential and threatening presence of rap music.

 

In the Tradition: An Anthology of Young Black Writers
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Author:  Kevin Powell, Ras Baraka (Editor)
Publisher:  Writers & Readers Publishing, Inc.
Date Published:  September 1992
Format:  Trade Paper

'In The Tradition is a provocative collection of works by some of America's most articulate young writers. Covering subjects which range from politics to love, this book crystallizes for its readers that the younger generation of Black poets and fiction writers have a serious grasp of the perils that beset their lives, their families and friends, their community-the writing is strong intelligent and mature.

Recognize: Poems
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Author:  Kevin Powell
Publisher:  Writers & Readers Publishing, Inc.
Date Published:  May 1995
Format:  Trade Paper

Driven by hip-hop music, popular culture, national and global events, and the specifics of his own life, Kevin Powell's voice is one of the boldest and brightest in the 1990's poetry renaissance. Passionate and witty, Powell's poetry is filled with fly girls and lost loves, grandmothers and absent fathers. His poetry conveys the hope, anger and fear of a generation.

 

Related Links

Official Kevin Powell Website
http://www.kevinpowell.net

Kevin Powell Elsewhere on AALBC.com

An Interview w/ Kevin Powell on Hip Hop, Race & Politics
http://www.daveyd.com/interviewkevinpowell.html

Open Letter to Chris Brown
http://aalbc.com/authors/open_letter_to_chris_brown.html

In Defense of Ashley Judd
http://aalbc.com/authors/in_defense_of_ashley_judd.html

Kevin for Congress

Step into a World

 

Kevin Powell is featured in the 2011 documentary film,

Behind Those Books, which is a thought Provoking Documentary Tackling Societal Ills Through Literature

The film was Written & Produced by: Kaven Brown & Edited & Directed by:
Mills Miller

Visit http://aalbc.it/behindthosebooks to learn more