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Unexplained Presence
200 pages, Paperback
Published September 3, 2024
1 person is currently reading
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About the author
Tisa Bryant
13 books52 followersTisa Bryant’s work often traverses the boundaries of genre, culture and history, creating multi-layered texts that demand new forms.
Her first book, Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007), is a collection of original, hybrid essays that remix narratives from Eurocentric film, literature and visual arts and zoom in on the black presences operating within them. In her introduction to Bryant’s recent reading, Stacy Szymaszek, director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York, said, “Like the great Edouard Glissant, her work is at once novel, essay and poetry, these modulations emerging and transmuting in a practice Bryant's latest publication, a collaborative volume with author/filmmaker Chris Kraus for the Belladonna Elders Series, contains an excerpt from her next novel, [the curator], a rumination on cinema and a black woman's ways of seeing.
Bryant maintains an active engagement with visual arts and literary community as a founding editor/publisher of the cross-genre hardcover annual, The Encyclopedia Project, and as faculty in the MFA Writing Program at the California Institute of the Arts.
Her first book, Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007), is a collection of original, hybrid essays that remix narratives from Eurocentric film, literature and visual arts and zoom in on the black presences operating within them. In her introduction to Bryant’s recent reading, Stacy Szymaszek, director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York, said, “Like the great Edouard Glissant, her work is at once novel, essay and poetry, these modulations emerging and transmuting in a practice Bryant's latest publication, a collaborative volume with author/filmmaker Chris Kraus for the Belladonna Elders Series, contains an excerpt from her next novel, [the curator], a rumination on cinema and a black woman's ways of seeing.
Bryant maintains an active engagement with visual arts and literary community as a founding editor/publisher of the cross-genre hardcover annual, The Encyclopedia Project, and as faculty in the MFA Writing Program at the California Institute of the Arts.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 3, 2024
Bryant’s prose is mouthwatering. She writes as if she is creating these movies, paintings, statues, for their first time. The perspective she brings to each media examined is unique for each, twisting around and turning to see through every splinter, recalling characters and stories to bring discrepancies into the reader’s eye. Why exactly is it that this character is acting out this way, and what would they feel now or then? How do we remember the details of stories or how do we so complicit-ly miss what is purposely placed out of frame?
The afterword by Margo Jefferson reflects what we’ve just experienced—not just read, for this is an event you move through and live and learn—and nicely wraps ending thoughts that praise Bryant in a much needed way.
I am calling this a must read, even if you are not a typical nonfiction reader, I promise its vast expanse of literary retelling, re-envisioning, and questioning will draw you in and never let you go. It also calls upon readers to think when taking in any and all art, about why a Black presence is there, or why it isn’t expanded upon or calls you to think why are so many Black characters, historical figures, constantly erased? Used for filler between heavily centered upon white characters?
5 stars and a thankfulness for somehow mistakenly receiving a copy early!
The afterword by Margo Jefferson reflects what we’ve just experienced—not just read, for this is an event you move through and live and learn—and nicely wraps ending thoughts that praise Bryant in a much needed way.
I am calling this a must read, even if you are not a typical nonfiction reader, I promise its vast expanse of literary retelling, re-envisioning, and questioning will draw you in and never let you go. It also calls upon readers to think when taking in any and all art, about why a Black presence is there, or why it isn’t expanded upon or calls you to think why are so many Black characters, historical figures, constantly erased? Used for filler between heavily centered upon white characters?
5 stars and a thankfulness for somehow mistakenly receiving a copy early!
Displaying 1 of 1 review