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Africa World Press has released Beautiful. And Ugly Too, the critically acclaimed, second poetry collection by poet, author, scholar, and entrepreneur Molefi Asante Jr. ’04.
“Beautiful. And Ugly Too is a thought-provoking journey down the lonely road of wisdom and whiplash,” states Los Angeles Times. “It penetrates, casting an unflinching eye on humanity through a historical kaleidoscope,” states The Philadelphia Inquirer in an article featuring Asante, noting that he “boasts the kind of resume that would make a writer twice his age proud.”
Asante is undertaking a book tour at many destinations, including Cornell University on March 10. He has lectured and read at institutions in the U.S., Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean, as well as appeared as a guest on numerous international TV and radio programs.
He is the writer and producer of 500 Years Later, which won the Best Documentary award at the 2005 Pan African Film & Arts Festival. Screened across the globe from Germany to Zanzibar to the United States, the film spans 25 countries and includes interviews with civil rights activist Paul Robeson Jr., Kwanzaa founder Maulana Karenga, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and others. It was picked as best film in the Black Berlin International Cinema competition, won the international-documentary prize at the Harlem International Film Festival, and earned recognition as best documentary at the Bridgetown Film Festival in Barbados.
Psychology graduate Ben Haaz ’03 is associate producer for 500 Years Later, which “explores the collective atrocities that uprooted Africans from their culture and homeland, and scattered them into the vehement winds of the New World, 500 years ago.”
Asante screened the film at Lafayette in October as part of the second annual conference organized by the student group Africans Creating African Consciousness and Interest Abroad.
“It’s so inspiring to watch the film and listen to the things people say because they have so much wisdom and knowledge,” says Asante, a graduate student at UCLA’s School of Film and Television. “I’m so lucky to have done the interviews.”
“It was difficult because it was such a long project and you don’t always see progress in the way that you do when you write an article,” he adds. “For a documentary over two hours long, we had thousands of hours of film.”
The English and Africana Studies graduate wrote an article, “Enough disrespect: Return rap to its artistic roots,” that was published last fall in USA Today and Black Enterprise. It critiques rap music as a “once-defiant message (that) has slowly deteriorated.”
At Lafayette, Asante and Haaz founded Focused Digizine, a quarterly DVD covering hip-hop culture that combines a magazine format with film and digital video.
“I want the things that I’m doing to have amazing impact on people’s lives,” he says. “I don’t want there to be negative associations in people’s minds about African Americans I want to see the people whom I respect and admire on television rather than the criminal or basketball player.”
He says that his college experience and professors have had a lasting impact.
“Lafayette has helped me in terms of community. The two closest people in my creative world and personal world are from Lafayette,” he says. “Ben Haazis an incredible person and we will be making films for the rest of our lives. We have a mutual respect for each other as artists and individuals. Maya Freelon ’05is my partner in life and art. She was an associate producer on 500 Years Later, translator, and her artwork is shown in it. These people are both great individuals, artists, and visionaries.
“In my new book, I refer to a poem in a book by [English] professor Lee Upton because she wrote a poem about the idea. These people at Lafayette live in me, through me, and with me every day. [English] professor Ian Smith is one of the people responsible for pushing me so hard as a writer. He said, ‘I’m not going to let you be some second-rate poet’ and hopefully I’m not letting him down.”
Asante published a collection of poems, Like Water Running Off My Back, winner of the American Academy of Poets Jean Corrie Prize, and Time, a limited-edition book with art by Curlee Raven Holton, professor of art and director of Lafayette’s Experimental Printmaking Institute, and an audio track by trumpet player Jafar Baron. He is a contributing author to Encyclopedia of Black Studies and wrote the introduction for Our Flesh of Flames by Theodore Harris and Amiri Baraka. He has been a featured poet on HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam” and has lectured and read his poetry in the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean.
More information on Asante and his career is available on his web site.
Molefi Asante Jr. ’04 reads from his creative work during the second annual conference held by Lafayette student group Africans Creating African Consciousness and Interest Abroad.