Danny Duncan Collum, author of the novel White Boy, teaches writing at Kentucky State University in Frankfort.
Posts By This Author
The Outlaw Rebel
When I heard about the death of country singer Waylon Jennings in February, my mind flashed back to the day I first bought one of his records.
The Rockabilly Movement
During the month of March, PBS affiliates will be airing a documentary called Welcome to the Club—The Women of Rockabilly.
Why "Imagine"? Why Now?
Worth Noting…
For more than 20 years, Elie Wiesel has been America's official bearer of memory, keeper of accounts, and arbiter of propriety regarding the Holocaust.
Harry Potter Comes Home
‘‘The [Harry Potter computer] game will feature a series of challenges, all inspired by the original book's storyline..."
Rock's Little Secret
Keeping it 'Real'
Disney's 'urban' experience is cleaned-up, dumbed-down, and smoothed-over.
The Bottom Line on the Beatles
This collection has no reason to exist, except as a shameless exploitation of the Lennon-McCarney catalog.
Free Citizens or Spoiled Children?
The Telecommunications Land Rush
In the 19th century, with much sweat and blood, immigrant labor gangs pushed a railroad across the newly continental United States.
Sacred Connections
I heard it in passing on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered one afternoon; it was a blurb for an upcoming story.
Dead Certain
For the past 25 years, executions have taken place somewhere in America almost every week. They happened in the dead of night.
Yahoo for Hackers
Like so many big events of the digital age, the February shutdown of all those major e-commerce Web sites (Yahoo, E*TRADE, eBay, etc.) didn’t make much of a dent in my real life.
Yes, we have a computer and Internet access. But the computer is not in our house; it’s in an outbuilding we turned into an office. It’s only 20 feet from our back door, but those 20 feet, and a childproof lock on the door, are enough to separate our family’s real life from the virtual one. We unlock the door for specific work- or study-related purposes and lock it again when the job is done. The only exception is e-mail for far-flung family and friends.
As it happened, the day of the great Web meltdown was very cold, and I was out late with a night class. So I didn’t even walk those 20 feet to check the e-mail, much less fire up Yahoo in search of the latest TV and movie news. (Hey, for me that’s work-related!) When I finally did hear the news, the significance (dare I say justice?) of the event was plain.
Left historian Michael Kazin told The Village Voice that the e-commerce guerrillas are the direct descendants of Abbie Hoffman, and he was right. There has not been a more perfect symbolic, made-for-media political act since Hoffman and company dumped baskets of dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Arise, Ye Prisoners of Globalization
Something new entered history on November 30, 1999.
It's a Playboy World After All
Get out the garlic! Hef is back. That was the gist of a series of articles last summer and fall chronicling the return to the limelight of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner.