John Ridley is a multi-faceted talent in film,
television, and publishing. The author of three highly regarded novels and a
former producer on NBC's Third Watch, he wrote and produced the film Undercover
Brother, conceived the story for Three Kings, and wrote and directed Cold Around
the Heart. His critically acclaimed novel Stray Dogs was made into the movie
U-Turn, directed by Oliver Stone. In addition, he is also a regular commentator
for National Public Radio.
(bio courtesy.
Warner Books)
Conversation
with the Mann by John Ridley
Click to order via
Amazon
Format: Hardcover, 448pp.
ISBN: 0446528366
Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated
Pub. Date: June 2002
"What do you want?"
"I want the Ed Sullivan Show."
At the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, like a lot of black Americans,
comedian Jackie Mann wanted to be somebody. And for him there was only one way
to achieve that: to make it big. Make it, no matter the cost: friends, family,
one's own self-esteem and self-respect. This is the story of a young man's
journey from Harlem to stardom, a story
of Hollywood royalty, New York glitterati, Vegas Mafiosi, Northern bigotry, and Southern racism. This is a story of love, honor, betrayal, and redemption; of fame bought and paid for by any means necessary. It is the story of one man's desire and an entire race's demands, and the incredible moment when the two came together as one. This is the story of Jackie Mann.
The
Drift
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to order via
Amazon
ISBN: 0375411828
Format: Hardcover, 288pp
Pub. Date: September 2002
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
"He was Charles Harmon, a black man "living white" and living
well - beautiful wife, German car, big house - in an upper-upper-middle-class
suburb of Los Angeles." "He is Brain Nigger Charlie, a train tramp eking out a
ragged existence on the railroads, leaning on drugs to keep him from thinking
about everything he had, everything his creeping dementia has forced him to run
from." Charlie's been asked a desperate favor: find the seventeen-year-old niece
of the man who taught him how to survive the rails - a girl lost somewhere on
the High Line, the "corridors of racist hate" along the tracks of the Pacific
Northwest. Charlie has little hope of finding her alive, but the request is an
obligation he can't refuse. The search is a twisted trail that leads from Iowa
to Washington State, mixing lies and deceit, hate and hopelessness, and brutal,
stubbornly unsolved murders. All of which Charlie is prepared to meet in kind.
What he isn't prepared for is a path that will eventually lead him back to what
he thought no longer existed - his own humanity - though the toll may turn out
to be his life.
Related Links
The Negro-Cons' Deal with the Devil: Honorary White
Status in Return for Abandoning Fellow Blacks by
Lloyd Williams
In reaction to John Ridley's article in
December�s Esquire Magazine; Kam Williams, shares his thoughts:
http://aalbc.com/reviews/thenegro-cons.htm