Hey! It's Interview Time......Here's A Preview For Next Sunday (5.23.10) on Afronerd Radio-Thomas Chatterton Williams' Loses His Cool!

I'm sure our readers and supporters (even our detractors) have been wondering about our interview schedule, so make sure to stop by this upcoming Sunday as we welcome author, Thomas Chatterton Williams, to discuss his latest literary effort, Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-hop Culture. You may be familiar with Mr. Chatterton for an earlier critique of modern hip hop culture in a Washington Post op-ed entitled, Black Culture Beyond Hip Hop. Now fast forward three years and the minstrelsy continues with unfettered verve. Here's an excerpt from a ExpressNightOut.com piece, highlighting Chatterton's new treatise:

THOMAS CHATTERTON WILLIAMS' father, "Pappy," pretty much solidified his son's fate when he named him after the 18th century English poet. And Williams has never wavered in his dedication to the craft — or second-guessed his father's wisdom.

"Ever since I was old enough to speak, he always told me that I was a writer and that I could write," Williams said. "There were books all over the house, and I was always told that I could write and that it was something good to do. So when I finally did it, it wasn't so strange or bizarre."

But Williams, who left Fanwood, N.J., to attend Georgetown University for a degree in philosophy and then graduated from New York University with a master's in journalism, spent his teenage years immersed in a hip-hop culture that tried to undermine everything his father had taught him. That struggle, and Williams' eventual decision to fully break away from a life of baggy jeans and being "real," is documented in his first book, "Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture."

"I still listen to some hip-hop and I still have black friends, but once my freshman year of college came around, I never had the same relationship [with hip-hop]," Williams said. "It didn't define me or hold me the way it had before."

For the ExpressNightOut article in its entirety, click on the link below:


It Does Stop: Thomas Chatterton Williams, 'Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture'


And in the interim, let's breath a sigh of relief for positive Black imagery, The Family Smith on Oprah: