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African American Literature Book Club - The #1 Site for "Readers of Black Literature" |
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| #1
by Caroline Clarke
This inspiring collection of lessons culled
from candid, intimate interviews with famous and prominent black
achievers features advice on how to get ahead in business-and in life.
Contributors include groundbreakers in a broad variety of
industries-from investment banking to entertainment to politics-who
share valuable advice with people of all ages. From entrepreneurs to
corporate stars, the contributor list is outstanding, featuring some of
the most well-known and well-respected leaders in the black community,
ranging from Ken Chenault, President of American Express, to filmmaker
Spike Lee. Contributors also include Bryant Gumbel,
Johnny Cochran, Maxine Waters, Terrie Williams, and more. |
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#2
Format: Mass Market Paperback, 433pp. "Repercussions are felt for decades in a dozen
lives after a racist beating turns to cold-blooded murder in a small Mississippi
town in the 1950s. .. . Chicago-born Armstrong Todd is fifteen, black, and
unused to the segregated ways of the Deep South when his mother sends him to
spend the summer with relatives in her native rural Mississippi. For speaking a
few innocuous words in French to a white woman, Armstrong pays the ultimate
price when her husband, brother-in-law, and father-in-law decide to teach him a
lesson. The lives of everyone involved in the incident--black and white--are
changed forever, andthe reverberations extend well into the next generation."
(Publisher's note) |
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| #3
Format:
Mass Market Paperback, 544pp.
Brothers and Sisters is set in the white-hot center of racially troubled Los
Angeles, still healing from the deep scars of riot, violence, and suspicion.
At the story's heart is Esther Jackson, an African-American who has built a
promising career at a downtown bank. When a black man is hired as a senior
vice-president, Esther is heartened - until his interest in a white officer
at the bank percolates into sexual harassment. Esther is forced to choose
between commitment to the friend who is being harassed and loyalty to a
person of her own race. When a looting of bank accounts creates suspicions
along racial lines, Esther must rethink her life even further, and her
vision of the American dream. |
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Format: Hardcover, 320pp. A fresh insightful voice in African-American fiction, Kimberla Lawson Roby has won raves from readers and critics alike. Reviewer's Bookwatch called BEHIND CLOSED DOORS a truly uplifting account of struggle and adjustment. Eric Jerome Dickey, New York Times bestselling author of Milk in My Coffee, praised the unforgettable characters of HERE AND NOW, and called Roby a true writer, a storyteller at the top of her game. Now Kim Roby is back with the powerful story of a woman torn between salvaging the marriage which has given her both happiness and heartbreak, and savoring her first sweet taste of independence. Tanya Black has everything a woman could want: a fulfilling career, a beautiful daughter, an elegant home and a handsome, charismatic husband who is pastor at a prominent Baptist church. And yet, Tanya can no longer deny that the calm surface of her life hides a growing turbulence. Her husband Curtis, once a supportive partner and passionate lover, has grown remote, and Tanya has the uneasy feeling that her comfortable life is about to change forever. When Tanya uncovers disturbing truths about
Curtis, she is plunged into a bittersweet journey of discovery. For
while she learns painful new lessons about love, betrayal and sensual
temptation, she also discovers, within herself, the wisdom to celebrate
the victories that are hers alone. ~from book cover |
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#5
by John Keene Format: Paperback, 96pp. The back cover reads: An experimental first novel of poem-like compression,
Annotations has a great deal to say about growing up Black in St, Louis.
Reminiscent of Jean Toomers
Cane, the book is in part a meditation on African-American autobiography. What
caught my eye was the comparison to Cane an apt comparison. Annotations is
lyrically written, visual, a real find! ~Troy
Johnson, AALBC.com |
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#6 Love Poems
Format: Hardcover, 96pp. 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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| #7
Edited by Carol Taylor
Format: Paperback, 272pp. Brown Sugar brings together some of the most acclaimed voices in
today's black literary world-Sapphire, Natasha Tarpley, Reginald Harris, and
Pamela Sneed, among them. These titillating stories cover the full spectrum of
black experience and identity as they reveal sexuality and sensuality in all
their varied and exotic forms. From the subtle to the graphic, Brown Sugar
embraces the ardor and passion of black love and lust, and will appeal to both
men and women. Featuring both well-established authors and promising new
writers, this one-of-a-kind collection represents the past, present, and future
of black literature at its pleasurable and outrageous best. |
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#8 The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks by Randall N. Robinson Format: Paperback, 272pp. In Randall Robinson's view, racial problems
can't be solved until America is willing to face up to the devastating effects
of slavery and educate all Americans, black and white, about the history of
Africa and its people. |
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| #9
Chester Himes, Marc Gerald (Editor), Samuel Blumenfield (Editor), Melvin Van Peebles (Introduction) Format: Paperback, 363pp. In 1937 Chester Himes, newly released from a
seven-year stretch in the Ohio State Penitentiary for grand larceny, began his
first novel, Yesterday Will Make You Cry. By turns brutal and lyrical and never
less than totally honest, it tells the autobiographical story of young Jimmy
Monroe's passage through the prison system, which tests the limits of his
sanity, his capacity for suffering, and his definition of love. Stunningly
candid about racism, homosexuality, and prison corruption, the book would take
sixteen years and four subsequent revisions before being published in a
much-altered form as Cast the First Stone in 1953. Even bowdlerized, it was
recognized as a sardonic masterpiece of debasement and transfiguration. This
edition, the first hardcover publication in Norton's Old School Books series,
presents for the first time the book precisely as Himes intended it to be read,
with its raw honesty and startling compassion entirely intact. |
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| #10
Format: Hardcover, 448pp. A Day Late and a Dollar Short is also #1 on the New York Times Best Seller's List (February 4 - February 10, 2001) Much-heralded and long awaited, Terry McMillan's tour-de-force novel introduces the Price family-matriarch Viola, her sometimes-husband Cecil, and their four adult kids, each of whom sees life-and one another-through thick and thin, and entirely on their own terms. With her hallmark exuberance and cast of characters so sassy, resilient, and full of life that they breathe, dream, and shout right off the page, the author of the phenomenal best-sellers Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back has given us a novel that takes us ever-further into the hearts, minds, and souls of America-and gives us six more friends we never want to leave. |
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