‘Round Midnight: An Appreciation
Jazz Quarterly Magazine, January 2021
The Citizen Kane of Jazz Movies turns 35
Black History Month 2020: Art and Education in a Turbulent Era
Democrats abroad France, February 2020
"We live in paradoxical times. Twenty years into the twenty-first century, remembrance and public recognition of the legacy of slavery and racial oppression are more frequent while, at the same time, the backlash against such acknowledgment grows more intense... "
"Mr. Trump and Mr. Creosote" by Jake Lamar in Paris
thebaffler.com, December 6, 2016
Baffler correspondents in Paris, Hong Kong, Penang, and London write in with their reactions to Trump's election.
"I had a health crisis in France I’m here to tell you that 'socialized medicine' is terrific."
The Los Angeles Times, November 18,2016
"On Sunday, March 29, 2015, two days after my 54th birthday, I came very close to dying..."
Bookforum, Feb/Mar 2016
"Two books plumb the racial breakthroughs and disappointments of the Obama era"
"A Pakistani-British writer chronicles his odyssey through the war on terror"
Bookforum, Feb/Mar 2015
"Displaced Personhood Jake Lamar reviews Mohsin Hamid's first collection of essays, "Discontent and Its Civilizations"
How to say the N-Word in French ?
"The word nègre is being bandied about in the French media in an unusually intense way these days, thanks to the blatherings of the cosmetics tycoon Jean-Paul Guerlain, who said on French television recently..."
August Wilson’s Uncompromising Vision for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
The New Republic, January 14, 2021
"It has taken decades for his Century Cycle plays to reach the screen—but not for lack of interest"
Is Multiculturalism Europe’s New Taboo?
The Root, July 30, 2011
"'Who in this room is French?' Nourdine Nabili asks a group of 25 eighth-graders in Bondy, one of the concrete working-class suburbs just outside Paris..."
Art of the African Diaspora comes to Paris
The Root, October 16, 2010
"When it comes to African art, the French have always veered toward old-school, artisanal fare. Now, in the largest auction of art from the Diaspora, French art collectors will get a chance..."
The Root, August 4, 2010
"Nearly 100 years after it was composed, nearly 45 years after its first full-scale performance in America, Scott Joplin's opera Treemonisha has arrived in France. Beneath the glittering..."
Jake Lamar on Harlem, Himes and Viper's Dream
Shots Magazine, April 2023
"Growing up in New York City in the 1970s, I revered mid-century African American authors like Richard Wright and James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison. Nobody told me that one of their contemporaries, Chester Himes, was a major writer."
The Best Social Thrillers about Money, Race, and Power
Shepherd.com, April 2023
"Many of my novels fit the term 'social thriller,' popularized by Jordan Peele to define his ground-smashing classic film Get Out. Peele identified a genre that has been with us, particularly when it comes to crime fiction, for a long time. I've always been fascinated by dark, suspenseful stories that explore the nature of greed, of racism, of political power. And how the three are so often wrapped around each other."
The Four Corners of Subjectivity
Crimereads.com, October 2023
"How do crime writers get readers to 'care about' characters who do terrible things?"
