Irma McClaurin

Irma McClaurin, PhD is the Culture and Education Editor for Insight News of Minneapolis. A bio-cultural anthropologist and writer, she lives in Raleigh, NC (www.irmamcclaurin.com) (@mcclaurintweets). Most recently, she provided technical assistance to the Friends of Oberlin Cemetery to acquire Landmark status for an historic African American Cemetery in Raleigh, NC.

ARTSPEAK: DWB-- Diving while Black

Thursday, 03 November 2011 00:00 Irma McClaurin, PhD, Culture and Education Editor

My first memory of moving underwater wasn't real. At 8 years, old I participated in a special science summer program for what we would now call "gifted" children; I wrote a play in which the setting was the sea. The main character was a young girl who finds a seahorse that takes her on a magical journey underwater.

Artspeak: Destination Curaçao and the North Sea Jazz Festival

Friday, 09 September 2011 12:51 Irma McClaurin - Twitter: mcclaurintweets

While Curaçao is a tiny country of less than 150,000 inhabitants, it pulled off an enormously successful music event for the second time on September 2&3, 2011.

If you want beautiful beaches, friendly locals, and a cultural cornucopia of Papiamento, Dutch, Spanish, English, with residuals of Portuguese, African and indigenous native Americans, set sail for Curaçao and the North Sea Jazz Festival before Labor Day about this time next year.

(Artspeak) “Caroline, or Change” at the Guthrie Theater is Life Magnified

Thursday, 02 July 2009 15:40 Irma McClaurin

When story, lyrics, voices, stagecraft, and vision come together, the result is powerful, memorable, and impactful. Case in point is Tony Kushner’s “Caroline, or change, the musical, now playing at the Guthrie Theater through June 21, 2009.

Artspeak: Yo-Yo Ma and the Road to Human Kindness through the Art of Music

Thursday, 02 April 2009 00:00 Irma McClaurin

After you've been greeted by Yo-Yo Ma with a hug instead of a handshake, you gain some appreciation for how he has, as the Artistic Director, managed to convince an ever-changing group of almost 60 artists (performers and composers) from different cultures and countries, who speak multiple languages, to become collaborators in the visionary Silk Road Project, Inc., founded in 1998.

(Artspeak) Lest We Forget...

Thursday, 19 March 2009 14:05 Irma McClaurin, PhD

I have learned over time that it is always good to listen when Elders speak. And when someone as prolific and sanguine as John Edgar Wideman opens his mouth, we’d be fools not to hungrily hang onto his every word. Wideman is one of the most profound writers living today, as well as a two-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner award and a MacArthur Fellowship recipient. His reading last month (February 5, 2009) from the latest work-in-progress (and what will be his tenth book), both provocative and unsettling, was part of the Givens Foundation’s Fifth Annual Nommo African American Authors series (http://www.mespa.net/African_American_Literature_Givens_Foundation.html).

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