A former staff writer, editor, and culture critic at the Washington Post and The Root, Natalie Hopkinson is an assistant professor in Howard University’s graduate program in communication, culture and media studies and a fellow at the Interactivity Foundation. She is the author of Go-Go Live and Deconstructing Tyrone (with Natalie Y. Moore). Her most recent book, A Mouth Is Always Muzzled: Six Dissidents, Five Continents, and the Art of Resistance (The New Press), is a meditation in the spirit of John Berger and bell hooks on art as protest, contemplation, and beauty in politically perilous times. Part post-colonial manifesto, part history of British Caribbean, part exploration of art in the modern world, A Mouth Is Always Muzzled is a dazzling analysis of the insistent role of art in contemporary politics and life. In crafted, well-honed prose, Hopkinson knits narratives of culture warriors. A Mouth Is Always Muzzled is a moving meditation documenting the artistic legacy generated in response to white supremacy, brutality, domination, and oppression. In the tradition of Paul Gilroy, it is a cri de coeur for the significance of politically bold—even dangerous—art to all people and nations.
