Feb 2000

Title: She
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Author: Saul Stacey Williams
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Publisher: Simon and Schuster Inc.
Date Published: June 1999
Format: Paperback And CD - $9.60 (plus shipping and tax)

"Who says poetry does not sell?" -- Troy Johnson AALBC.com

She is a fascinating and unique collection of interconnected poems by this multi-talented star -- and marks the beginning of an incredible and totally original artistic career.

Title: The Seventh Octave: The Early Writings of Saul Stacey Williams
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ALL TIME AALBC BEST SELLING BOOK for 1998 & 1999
(out of almost 1,000 different titles sold)!

Author: Saul Stacey Williams, Jessica C. Moore (Editor)
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Publisher: Moore Black Press
Date Published: February 1998
Format: Trade Paper

Hailed as "a dreadlocked dervish of words...the Bob Marley of American poets" (Esquire), Saul Williams is a gifted young poet who is opening up this literary art form to a new generation of readers. Like his writing -- a fearless mix of connecting rhythms and vibrant images -- Saul Williams is unstoppable. He received raves for his performance as an imprisoned street poet in the Trimark Pictures release Slam, winner of the Camera d'Or at Cannes and the Grand Jury prize at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. The consummate spoken-word performance artist, Williams has also been signed by producer Rick Rubin to record a CD of his poetry.

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#3

Title: Words Don't Fit In My Mouth
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Author: Jessica C. Moore
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Format: Trade Paper, 125 pages
Published April 1997, Moore Black Press

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#4

Satin Doll
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Author: Karen E. Quinones Miller
Publisher: Oshum Publishing Company Inc.
Date Published: November 1999
Format: Trade Paper

". . . a real page turner! You won't want to put it down. . . . It's about wanting more, getting it, and finding sometimes that the brass ring is just that - brass. A great book club choice."Jenice M. Armstrong, Philadelphia Daily News"Satin Doll moves, grooves, fights and delights. It's wonderfully entertaining and a must read."Jamal Joseph, Screenwriter, director and producer"Filled with sassy, humorous, and thought-provoking dialogue, Satin Doll is a wonderful, page-turning debut."
-- Kimberla Lawson Roby, (Author of best-selling novel "Behind Closed Doors" and "Casting the First Stone"

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#5

Love Poems
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Author: Nikki Giovanni
Publisher: Morrow,William & Co
Date Published: January 1997
Format: Trade Cloth

In a career that has spanned more than a quarter century, Nikki Giovanni has earned the reputation as one of America's most celebrated and controversial writers. Now, she presents a stunning collection of love poems that includes more than twenty new works.

From the revolutionary "Seduction" to the tender new poem, "Just a Simple Declaration of Love," from the whimsical "I Wrote a Good Omelet" to the elegiac "All Eyes on U," written for Tupac Shakur, these poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which Nikki Giovanni is beloved and revered.

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#6

The First Passage: Blacks in the Americas, 1502-1617
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Author: Colin A. Palmer, Designed by Sandy Kaufman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Date Published: January 1995
Format: Trade Cloth

'The First Passage' examines the first century of the recorded black presence in the Americas. The ordeal of the Atlantic crossing gave way to isolation and humiliation of slavery and the loss of friends and family. Some slaves attempted rebellion and escape. Others maintained as many religious and cultural traditions as possible and, as the African-American population grew, forged new traditions and new ties of kinship. This history remains at the core of black life in the Americas. Colin Palmer tells a story of extraordinary suffering. But the book is also a timeless lesson in endurance and survival.

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#7

A Long Way from Home
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Author: Connie Briscoe
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, Incorporated
Date Published: August 1999
Format: Trade Cloth

Briscoe's new work had a startling genesis: as a child, she wondered about the photographs of white-looking women on the mantel and was surprised to find that they were her forebears. Briscoe is a descendant of slaves on James Madisons plantation, the setting of this saga about three generations of house slaves.
--Library Journal

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#8

The Brethren
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Author: John Grisham
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published: February 2000
Format: Trade Cloth

Trumble, a minimum security federal prison, home to the usual assortment of criminals--drug dealers, bank robbers, swindlers, embezzlers, tax evaders, two Wall Street crooks, one doctor, at least four lawyers.

And three former judges who call themselves The Brethren: one from Texas, one from California, and one from Mississippi. They meet each day in the law library, their turf at Trumble, where they write briefs, handle cases for other inmates, practice law without a license, and sometimes dispense jailhouse justice. And they spend hours hatching schemes to make money.

Then one of their scams goes awry. It ensnares the wrong victim, an innocent on the outside, a man with dangerous friends, and The Brethren's days of quietly marking time are over.

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#9

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
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Author: James Weldon Johnson, Philip Smith (Editor)
Publisher: Dover Publications, Incorporated
Date Published: May 1995
Format: Trade Paper

One of the most prominent African-Americans of his time, James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was a successful lawyer, educator, social reformer, songwriter and critic. But it was as a poet and novelist that he achieved lasting fame.

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#10

The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey
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Author: Toi Derricotte
Publisher: Norton,Ww
Date Published: May 1999
Format: Trade Paper

This exquisitely written journal will be one of the decade's most provocative and controversial books about race. "All my life I have passed invisibly into the white world, and all my life I have felt that sudden and alarming moment of consciousness there, of remembering I am black. It may feel like emerging too quickly from deep in the ocean, or touching an electric fence, or like a deer paralyzed in the headlights of an oncoming car," writes Toi Derricotte, a light-skinned black woman.

This book began as sketchy journal entries over twenty years ago when the author moved into an all-white neighborhood near New York City. "I believed that my unconsciousness of my blackness, my 'forgetting,' was symptomatic of some deep refusal of 'self,' a kind of death wish. . . . I wanted to capture the language of self-hate, the pain of re-emerging thought and buried memory and consciousness." Here the author describes encounters with family, neighbors, friends, and colleagues where she is forced to question what it means to be a black woman living in a racially divided world. The result is a brilliant and painful document, a meditation about the complexity of race in this country. It is also a book about uncovering the denied and shameful aspects of the self, and the author's journey toward self-acceptance.

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