Black Nerd Problems: Essays - William Evans
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Black Nerd Problems: Essays - William Evans Book
The creators of the popular website Black Nerd Problems bring their witty and unflinching insight to this engaging collection of pop culture essayson everything from Mario Kart to issues of representationthat will fill you with joy and give you hope for the future of geek culture (Ernest Cline, #1 New York Times bestselling author). When William Evans and Omar Holmon founded Black Nerd Problems, they had no idea whether anyone beyond their small circle of friends would be interested in their little corner of the internet. But soon after launching, they were surprised to find out that there was a wide community of people who hungered for fresh perspectives on all things nerdy. In the years since, Evans and Holmon have built a large, dedicated fanbase eager for their brand of cultural critiques, whether in the form of a laugh-out-loud, raucous Game of Thrones episode recap or an eloquent essay on dealing with grief through stand-up comedy. Now, they are ready to take the next step with this vibrant and hilarious essay collection, which covers everything from X-Men to Breonna Taylor with alternately hilarious, thought-provoking, and passionate (School Library Journal) insight and intelligence. A much needed and fresh pop culture critique from the perspective of people of color, this hugely entertaining, eminently thoughtful collection is a master class in how powerfuland funcultural criticism can be (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
P> Review Evans and Holmon examine a broad swath of the popular-culture landscape, from anime and video games to comic books and movies, mixing social commentary and insight with the sheer love of the true fan [The] authors reach far and wide across fan culture and use a pleasing blend of humor and pathos to connect readers to the material. An exercise in pop culture criticism that is simultaneously funny, thoughtful, and provocative. Kirkus Reviews (starred) This book is a welcome, come-in gesture. You may not get every pop culture reference, but youll feel it. Chicago Tribune Reading Black Nerd Problems will fill you with joy and give you hope for the future of geek culture. If you dig writing that is authentic, enthusiastic, and cynicism-free, this BNP collection will be your jam. I promise. Ernest Cline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ready Player One [A] wide-ranging, compulsively readable debut collectionEvans and Holmon are often hilariousand always original. This hugely entertaining, eminently thoughtful collection is a master class in how powerfuland funcultural criticism can be." Publishers Weekly (starred review) William Evans and Omar Holmon reveal the many things at work in the mind of the brown nerd: skepticism, humor, delight, but most of all, love. Man, I wish this book existed when I was a kid. Marc Bernardin, co-creator of Comixologys Adora and the Distance and supervising producer of Star Trek: Picard "Holmon, [...is...] the co-founder, along with William Evans, 41, of the website Black Nerd Problems. Their book of the same title will be published this summer. Both projects excavate the territory of nerd culture comics, anime, e-sports, tabletop gaming, science fiction, fantasy and more from a Black perspective that the broader nerd community has historically overlooked or, worse still, outright attacked." T, The New York Times Style Magazine Omar and Will are the best of the best at dissecting pop culture. Kari Byron, bestselling author of Crash Test Girl, host of Crash Test World, and former host of Mythbusters Alternately hilarious, thought-provoking, and passionate, sometimes all within the same essay. The authors knowledge of all things nerdy is encyclopedic yet the depth at which they connect their subject matter to real-life issues is what makes the book stand out. School Library Journal The humor balances the seriousness of the subject matter, allowing for a better, more intimate understanding of the authors passions. By taking readers through feelings of disappointment, elation, confusion, and pure unbridled joy, Holmon and Evans make Black Nerd Problems an incredibly cathartic read and a must have for anyone that appreciates what it is to be a nerd. AIPT Comics If you are a blerd, Black Nerd Problems is a must-read. It is insightful, humorous, and written like you are just having a conversation with a nerdy friend. BlerdFrom the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the nuanced aspects of cosplay while Black, Evans and Holman give their unabashed and at times emotional takes on some of pop cultures greatest hits, making for a very entertaining read. The Root, The Best Books to Give (and Get) This Holiday Season About the Author: William Evans is an author, speaker, performer, and instructor known for founding the Writing Wrongs Poetry Slam and cofounding the popular website Black Nerd Problems. He has been a national finalist in multiple poetry slam competitions and was the recipient of both the 2016 Sustainable Arts Foundation Grant and the 2018 Spirit of Columbus Foundation Grant. The Callaloo and Watering Hole fellow is the author of three poetry collections and currently lives with his family in Columbus, Ohio. He is an MFA candidate at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia.Omar Holmon lives as he writes, one nerd reference at a time. Recognized by Rutgers University as a distinguished Alumnus Poet, he is the author of the poetry collection We Were All Someone Else Yesterday and cofounder of the website Black Nerd Problems. Omars voice is one that makes a home across numerous demographics. Like A Beautiful Mind but with more comic book and movie quotes, Omar is able to find the correlation between pop culture and any body of work, using humor in his social commentary to make serious points. Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Re-Definition: Nerd Isnt a Person, Its a Spectrum Re-Definition: Nerd Isnt a Person, Its a Spectrum OMAR HOLMON, aka Noah Websters Ghostwriter BEFORE WE CAN get into this real rap raw nerd essays and content, its important to understand what we as authors mean when we refer to the term nerd. How we define the word may be different than how the reader defines it. So allow me to get my TED Talk monologue on to break the definition of the word nerd down by how it has come to be defined in dictionaries. *takes off my regular square-framed glasses and puts on my public-speaking PowerPoint presentation tortoiseshell-framed glasses* The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a nerd as an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person; especially: one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits. Dictionarydefines a nerd as 1. a person considered to be socially awkward, boring, unstylish, etc.; 2. an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit: a computer nerd. As words evolve, they go through semantic change or, more fittingly, semantic progression. Semantic progression occurs when the modern meaning of a word is entirely different from its original meaning. Watch the breakdown: dope, as a noun, used to just refer to a stupid person (1850s); later on in time it became a reference to drugs (18801900s), but as an adjective it can refer to something as good or great (1980s). You can think of countless other words that youve seen evolve via idioms and slang, which varies across cultures and ethnicities. One word that hasnt officially (as of me writing this in 2020) evolved in the dictionary is the term nerd. Now, you may be reading this and thinking, Wheres this goin? Who gives a fuck? Why did he switch glasses when he was already wearing glasses? Well, if youre reading this book (that clearly says Black Nerd Problems on it) or just glimpsing through it, *Jeff Foxworthy voice* youuuuu might be a redneck nerd. Regardless, hear me out and watch how I flip this shit. The only saving grace between both online dictionaries descriptions is their second definitions for the term: one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits and an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby. Growing up in the 2000s from my teen to college years, I came to understand the term and had the term broken down to me as a person that knows a little bit about a lot of things, whereas a geek knows a lot about one specific thing. For me, and I want to say for a lot us that identify as nerds, this is a commonplace interpretation of the word, but as far as I know, I havent ever seen that reflected on paper regarding the word in an official definition. I stated all that to say this: its been a long time since the term nerd came in the context of a jock vs. an academic, or the popular high school quarterback pushing a scrawny kid into a locker, or the mean girls knocking books out of someones hands. Now in 2020, it aint really the Revenge of the Nerds movie setting for the context of the wordIm hard-pressed to say if it ever was and thank god cause even in that movie about underdog nerds trying to get their revenge, its full of misogyny and racial stereotypes. Speaking of stereotypes, media representation gotta be factored in the description for a nerd as well, right? A nerd is usually a male (which is usually sexist), typically white (which is typically racist), scrawny or fat (but in the derogatory fatphobic way), thats (lest we forget) into some obscure hobby/thing no one else cares about. [Sidebar: If youre reading this and wanting to say Steve Urkel from Family Matters as a breaking of the mold by being the first mainstream Black nerd, I question why Urkel, who debuted in 1989, gets that credit and not Dwayne Wayne from A Different World, who was a fucking mathematician and debuted two years before Urkel. Dwayne Wayne and Steve Urkel were both nerds, the only difference was Urkel played heavily on the exaggerated stereotypes of a nerd. So, is a nerd only recognized as a nerd when it comes with a full package of stereotypes? Never mind that the nerdy character Roger Raj Thomas from Whats Happening!! debuted in 1976. Wouldnt he be both their OG? But I digress] Okay, so we got the origin/etymology of nerd down, right? Boom. Now dead all that. With the way the term has evolved and how its been incorporated in mainstream media, nerd is much more than a singular person, its a spectrum. Nerd has evolved more so into being a fan of a genre. That genre doesnt have to just be comic books, movies. Sneakerheads are fans of sneakers and know them in explicit detail. They could be considered nerds. Hip-hop heads who know their entire history of the music genre can be considered nerds. Academic nerds. Cooking-show nerds. Sports fans are mos def nerds by being able to recount a players performance statistics like an RPG character. The list goes on. If you enjoy something, anything you want, if it excites you and you want other people to know of it and enjoy it, then youre a fan of it, which also means youre a fucking nerd for it. That sounds beautiful and inclusive on paper, doesnt it? Sounds great on paper Heres the problem. To be a nerd means being part of a subculture. A cultural group or collective within a much larger culture that doesnt adhere to the status quo, beliefs, or interests of the larger culture. If youre a Black or POC nerd, then youre in a subculture within a subculture (Inception shit). The problem is being a part of this subculture means youre part of a minority, which then becomes attached to the identity of being a nerd. So, when nerd shit starts becoming trendy, a divide occurs, with those nerds now being in an era where this thing only a few loved becomes loved by even more folks. This hobby that was part of the minority is now enjoyed by the majority. So, what happens when what you fan out for isnt the obscure cool thing only a few know about anymore? Its like having a favorite band or artist that was low-key for a long time suddenly blow up with a hit single. Its fan base widens and now theyve got a larger reach. Theres that feeling of having been there riding for them before they sold out, as the clich goes. As if everyone enjoying or having access to them now somehow dilutes the enjoyment for those there from the beginning. You know exactly what Im talking about. Watch the breakdown: We get big-budget superhero movies yearly now. Theyve become the new Spaghetti Westerns. These superhero movies bring more folks to comic books, comic books become more common reading material and are even seen as a more mainstream-adjacent hobby and not seen as just for kids. Nerds that fucked with comics when it wasnt associated with cool or trendy then feel like It wasnt accepted like that when I was coming up. Now that it is, how do I fit in? Therein lies the problem. Individually, that nerd is no longer part of a small underdog group; they become part of a larger group that likes comic books now. Its like going from the Resistance to joining the Empire. Theres this fear of losing that cool subculture-minority identity that theyve come to identify themselves by. So, in order to hold on to identity, you see folks using all the knowledge theyve acquired as a litmus test for others to see who was there from the beginning like them or knows as much as them. Now when someone comes into this group liking comics but doesnt know Professor Xs Social Security number stated in a back issue from thirty years ago, then theyre not a true fan or not a real nerd or, if theyre a woman, a fake geek girl. All this from a fear of a loss of identity. See how fear is the path to the dark side? Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering gatekeeping. Nerds gatekeeping other nerds to see if theyre nerdy enough for the nerdy club looks like Anakin Skywalker cuttin down them Jedi younglings. Youre hurtin the cause instead of helping it, fam. If the definition of nerd needs to go through semantic progression and the term nerd has evolved into a spectrum instead of just an individual, then the individuals that adhere to this spectrum must become more malleable and welcoming to all portions of said spectrum in order to make the definition true. I dont think nerd as a subculture is a thing of the past or a Force ghost now. The progression of nerd as a subculture shouldnt be feared, especially when nerd as a spectrum contains various multitudes and hues. I mean, think of the word nerd like the Pokmon Pikachu: weve gained so much experience over the years, its time for that fucker to evolve into a Raichu. However, if due to the fear of a loss of identity folks keep gatekeeping the term as if its a title to be earned instead of a realization one comes to across a spectrum of genres, then the definition of nerd will remain as it has been over the years, a Pikachu. Yeah, its cute, convenient, and comfortable, but with what we know now and all this experience, the definition of the word could take that next step and evolve into so much more like motherfucking Raichu or a hue in a vast nerdy mutherfucking spectrum.(BK-9781982150242)
| SKU | BK-9781982150242 |
| Barcode # | 9781982150242 |
| Brand | Gallery Books |
| Artist / Author | William Evans |
| Shipping Weight | 0.3200kg |
| Shipping Width | 0.150m |
| Shipping Height | 0.020m |
| Shipping Length | 0.230m |
| Type | Paperback |
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