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Despite commentator Joseph C. Phillips' diatribe against the movie Soul Plane and the African-American stereotyping he says it represents, the film still made it back into the top 12 films nationwide last weekend. This Father's Day, Phillips is looking outside the multiplex to gatherings taking place in cities across the country.

Alan Cheuse reviews The Curse of the Appropriate Man by South African expatriate writer Lynn Freed. The book is a collection of short fiction, with mostly Jewish South African female characters.

The 2003 Nobel Prize for literature is awarded to South African novelist J. M. Coetzee. He's the fourth African writer to win the prize in the last 40 years. Hear NPR's Neda Ulaby.

Cirque Du Soleil, the renowned performance troupe, is capitalizing on the success of its ongoing Las Vegas show "O" with a new production for adults only. "Zumanity," which opens Saturday, may be the riskiest show the Montreal-based company has ever produced. Jeff Lunden reports.

Many artists and art historians consider Romare Bearden one of America's most important and inventive artists. But he's hardly a household name. NPR's Neda Ulaby reports that the National Gallery of Art intends to change that. Bearden is the subject of the gallery's first major retrospective of an African American artist.

Established five years ago in Michigan, the Sphinx Competition encourages young Hispanic and African-American string musicians to get involved in the classical music world. Founder and president Aaron Dworkin says American orchestras lack diversity. Celeste Headlee of member station WDET reports.

After early reports that Rotterdam would briefly take apart a historic bridge for the yacht's passage, thousands of people joined a Facebook event called "Throwing eggs at superyacht Jeff Bezos."

Every Saturday night in a gritty YMCA in the South African city of Durban, men put on finely-pressed suits, drink cheap beer and compete in an a cappella Zulu choir competition called isicathamiya. They're sometimes called the "tip-toe guys". Isicathamiya means "in a stalking mood" and it refers to the slow deliberate dance moves the men do in unison while harmonizing. NPR's Jason Beaubien reports.

Walter Mosley tells NPR's Cheryl Corley about his latest novel, The Man in My Basement. The best-selling author examines race, freedom and power in a book that chronicles an unusual relationship between two men -- one black, one white.

Nearly four decades after the end of the Civil War, W.E.B. Du Bois set out to collect images that accurately portrayed the spirit of America's blacks. He wanted the photographs to help counteract stereotypes of African Americans as poor and uneducated. NPR's Michele Norris talks with the author of a new book about Du Bois' collection.