AALBC.com's Best Selling Books
September & October 2003
#1
Who's
Gonna Take the Weight?: Manhood, Race, and Power in America by Kevin Powell ISBN: 0609810448 In three mind-jolting essays by one of the most passionate and eloquent voices of his generation, Who's Gonna Take the Weight? by Kevin Powell leads us to the heart of the searing issues facing us today, from manhood, violence, and gender oppression to celebrity culture and hip-hop. Using compelling personal stories as the connecting thread, he examines what this nation has become since the monumental upheavals of the 1960s and where it might be headed if we're not careful.
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#2
A
Hustler's Wife ISBN:
0970247257 Sweet innocent Yarni, from a well-to do family, by chance, meets Richmond's notorious drug kingpin, Des. Immediately they develop an astronomical love, which separates her from her family and friends. But when Des, is sentenced to life in prison, she will learn, being a hustler's wife isn't as easy, with her sole provider behind bars. Travel with Yarni, as she survives when the script if flipped. At times she plays the game, and at other times...the game plays her. Her journey is filled with laughter, tears, failures, triumphs and perseverance. Nikki's debut novel is a smorgasbord of manipulation, street-life, greed, betrayal, envy, money, power and revenge.
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#3
Nervous by Zane ISBN: 0743476239 Zane's legion of fans can't get enough of her way of telling a juicy, sexy story. Now, the New York Times best-selling queen of erotica brings us a tale of a woman with a split personality -- one highly sexed and one sexually repressed. Jonquinette Pierce has always been nervous when it comes to men. She took a job dealing with mostly women so she could avoid men. She goes to work and comes straight home during the week, but on the weekends her other self, Jude, takes over and goes on intense sexual escapades.
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#4
God
Don't like Ugly by Monroe, Mary Format: Paperback, 352pp. Mary Monroe, the acclaimed author of The Upper Room, has had her work praised as "warm, energetic, and charming" by the Houston Post and "magnificent" byt the San Francisco Chronicle. Now, in her new novel, God Don't Like Ugly, she brings back to life the bond between two girls from opposite sides of the track and the shattering event that changes their lives forever. Set in Ohio during the 50's, 60's and 70's, this richly-drawn coming-of-age tale is about a sexually abused young black woman and the beautiful and diabolical best friend who comes to her rescue. Resonating with clear-eyed wit and uncompromising honesty, it is a tale of endurance, hope and triumph, full of laughter and pure enjoyment.
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#5
Stagolee
Shot Billy by Brown, Cecil ISBN: 0674010566 This Story was Never Meant to be sandwiched between the covers of a book, as neat lines of prose. In 1895 a man called "Stag" Lee Shelton shot a man called Billy Lyons in a St. Louis bar. A black-on-black crime that scarcely made headlines. But this story, turned into a song, is one that black Americans have never tired of repeating and reliving. This tale of dignity and death, violence and sex, has been given countless forms by artists ranging from Ma Rainey to the Clash. Billy died because he touched another man's five-dollar Stetson. Or was it because he cheated at a card game? Or was it because the antagonists straddled the great American fault line of race at the time the earth was shifting -- at the time a strange, almost conspiratorial political war was raging in St. Louis between traditional black Republicans and a renegade faction aligned with the traditionally racist Democratic party? A small portion of this story has been told again and again, generation after generation, but few, till now, have known what the whole story was. Novelist and scholar Cecil Brown explores this legend from what was in those days the second city of America, gateway between East and West and North and South: St. Louis. Though bits of actual history have been associated with the song, the true story -- told in its entirety for the first time in this book -- is more complex, more deeply rooted, than anything anyone would ever dare to invent. It tells of the first generation of free black men, crushed by a Genteel America that was both black and white. It tells of the wild place this country was in the nineteenth century -- so wild that the inhabitants of the twentieth century could take it only in small doses and needed to forget. Now it can be told in full.
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#6
Words
Don't Fit In My Mouth
Format: Paperback, 151pp. The Words Don't Fit In My Mouth has become a classic book among fans of the new movement of poets around the world. The first release from author jessica Care moore, The Words Don't Fit In My Mouth is a thematically, multi-various collage of poems on love and lost, relationships, racism, sexism, and identity that says: "..we exist, yes we do. It's a fact." In the words of editor Tony Medina, this collection is full of tom-boy muscle and tender sister love caresses. She coos and curses and condems- all in one breath, all in one poem, one book.
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#7
A
Right to Be Hostile: The Boondocks Treasury ISBN: 1400048575 Here’s the first big book of The Boondocks, more than four years and 800 strips of one of the most influential, controversial, and scathingly funny comics ever to run in a daily newspaper.
�With bodacious wit, in just a few panels, each day Aaron serves up�and
sends up�life in America through the eyes of two African-American kids
who are full of attitude, intelligence, and rebellion. Each time I read
the strip, I laugh�and I wonder how long The Boondocks can get away with
the things it says. And how on earth can the most truthful thing in the
newspaper be the comics?�
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#8
True
to the Game: A Teri Woods Fable
by
Woods, Teri
ISBN: 096722490X
This book represents the drug game during the late 80's from the inner city
streets of Philadelphia. The main characters, Gena and Quadir find themselves
caught in the vicious, yet seductive world of drugs and money. Quadir a
millionaire drug dealer flipping kilo after kilo, builds a massive money empire.
He, however, is also faced with the art of extortion brought upon by the
notorious junior mafia. She, however, is faced with holding onto her man, her
house, her car and the money. This is our life, these are our streets and this
book represents our losses, our gains, our sorrows and joys. With the good,
always comes the bad and when you play in this game you have to count the highs
and the lows. When you deal with loss after loss, when the people closest to you
are gunned down, when the people closest to you are millionaires from hustling
in the drug game, when you live this life and have everything money can buy, the
price is too often life in return. It's so hard to think about the bad when it's
all good. It's so hard to think about the sacrifices that will be made so the
next can eat, so the next can come up, so the next can survive to tell about it.
We at MMP thank the massive support from the brothers locked up, the massive
support from the streets, and if we never make it on a book shelf the hustle was
the real. We at MMP promise to never forget you, never forget the hustle and
always represent. This one is for the streets. |
#9
Race
Music:
Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop (Music of the African Diaspora
Series #7)
ISBN: 0520210484 This Powerful Book Covers the vast and various terrain of African American music, from bebop to hip-hop. Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., begins with an absorbing account of his own musical experiences with family and friends on the South Side of Chicago, evoking Sunday-morning worship services, family gatherings with food and dancing, and jam sessions at local nightclubs. This lays the foundation for a brilliant discussion of how musical meaning emerges in the private and communal realms of lived experience and how African American music has shaped and reflected identities in the black community. Deeply informed by Ramsey's experience as an accomplished musician, a sophisticated cultural theorist, and an enthusiast brought up in the community he discusses, Race Music explores the global influence and popularity of African American music, its social relevance, and key questions regarding its interpretation and criticism. Beginning with jazz, rhythm and blues, and gospel, this book demonstrates that while each genre of music is distinct-possessing its own conventions, performance practices, and formal qualities-each is also grounded in similar techniques and conceptual frameworks identified with African American musical traditions Ramsey provides vivid glimpses of the careers of Dinah Washington, Louis Jordan, Dizzy Gillespie, Cootie Williams, and Mahalia Jackson, among others, to show how the social changes of the 1940s elicited an Afro-modernism that inspired much of the music and culture that followed. Race Music illustrates how, by transcending the boundaries between genres, black communities bridged generational divides and passed down knowledge of musical forms and styles. It also considers how the discourse of soul music contributed to the vibrant social climate of the Black Power Era. In his discussion of hip-hop film and the stylistic developments in contemporary gospel, Ramsey shows how the social energy of "the modern" and other identity issues circulated within musical practice in the last decade of the twentieth century. Multilayered and masterfully written, Race Music provides a dynamic framework for rethinking the many facets of African American music and the ethnocentric energy that infused its creation.
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#10
THE
URBAN GUIDE TO BIBLICAL MONEY MANAGEMENT By Oteia Bruce Format: Paper, 165pp., 9" x 12" An easy-to-use, spiritually-minded workbook, The Urban Guide To Biblical Money Management is a "must read" for anyone who wants to discover that God is the power behind all wealth and the value of within all things. Great for individual and group use. "The primary focus of this book is to help readers understand what the Bible has to say about our money management habits, common financial mistakes, how to avoid and recover from them, and discover how to build financial security for ourselves. This book has four sections in which you will learn about budgeting, credit repair, stock investments, home-ownership, using the Internet to enhance your portfolio, real estate investments to small business development, insurance selection, preparing your will, and more. All sections and chapters start off with scriptural reference that is used as a foundation to build and expand upon when covering financial concepts. Each chapter ends with case studies and/or questions designed to help you keep the material fresh in your mind."
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