AALBC.com eNewsletter - February 25th 2011 - Issue #184
Celebrating Our Literary Legacy Since 1997


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AALBC.com Best Selling Books

AALBC.com's 25 Best Selling Books For 2010
http://aalbc.com/books/2010_by_month.htm

Fiction

#1 - For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
#2 - Getting to Happy by Terry McMillan
#3 - Total Eclipse of the Heart by Zane
#4 - Thug Matrimony by Wahida Clark
#5 - Thug Lovin' by Wahida Clark
#6 - Missionary No More: Purple Panties 2 Zane (Editor)
#7 - Purple Panties: An Eroticanoir.com Anthology Zane (Editor)

 

Non-fiction

#1 - Confessions of a Video Vixen by Karrine Steffans
#2 - The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing
#3 - The Vixen Manual: How to Find, Seduce & Keep the Man You Want by Karrine Steffans
#4 - Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell
#5 - The Vixen Diaries by Karrine Steffans
#6 - The Mis-Education of the Negro by Dr. Carter G. Woodson
#7 - Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny by Hill Harper

AALBC.com's 25 Bestselling Books for 2010 November 1st through December 31st 2010
http://aalbc.com/books/novdec2010.htm

AALBC.com's 25 Bestselling eBooks for 2010 (New)
http://aalbc.com/books/best_selling_ebooks_2010.html

Authors You Should Know

Cheryl Wills
http://aalbc.com/authors/cheryl_wills.html

Wills is an award-winning anchor and reporter for Time Warner Cable’s flagship news network, New York 1 News, based in New York City. She has been with the news channel since its launch in 1992 and the journalist is also the author of Die Free: A Heroic Family History (www.diefreethebook.com) which traces her great-great-great grandfather Sandy Wills courageous service in the Civil War as a member of the United States Colored Troops. Wills is also a popular and engaging public speaker and has appeared before audiences across the country. Cheryl is also a blogger for the internationally renowned The Huffington Post.

Also check out Cheryl's touching story about her grandmother’s perspective on skin color. 



Tony Lindsay
http://aalbc.com/authors/tony_lindsay.html

Lindsay is the author of several novels including; One Dead Preacher, Street Possession, Chasin’ It, Urban Affair, and One Dead Lawyer, and a short story collection titled Pieces of the Hole. He has published book critiques and reviews for Black Issue’s Book Review. He was a contributor to the anthology Don't Hate the Game, the on-line encyclopedia Identity.com, and Mosiac.com. He has been published by to the African American literary web-site ‘Timbooktu.com’, as well as the young adult magazine Cicada. He has a MFA from Chicago State University.



Stephanie Casher
http://aalbc.com/authors/stephaniecasher.html

Casher is an author of multicultural women’s fiction, freelance editor, and co-owner of The Pantheon Collective (TPC). She has a BA in Sociology with a Minor in Education from UC Santa Cruz, and won the Dean’s Undergraduate Award for her Senior Honors Thesis “Negotiating Identity and Cultural Capital: The Social and Structural Factors Affecting the Educational Attainment of Bi-Racial Men of African-American Descent.” She is in the process of completing the Professional Sequence in Editing through UC Berkeley Extension.



Endy
http://aalbc.com/authors/endy.htm

Endy was born in Newark, NJ. Like most inner city children she was fascinated by the noise of the busy streets in the "hood". Raised in a two parent home with her younger brother, her parents knew the harsh reality of living in the city. With her mother being robbed several times at gun point while operating the clothing store they owned, her father carted his family away to the suburbs of Linden, NJ. Endy's father wanted to give his family a better home and a solid foundation. Little did he know his daughter would be drawn back to the streets in which she was born.



Annette Gordon-Reed
http://aalbc.com/authors/annette.html

Gordon-Reed is a professor of law at New York Law School and a professor of history at Rutgers University. She is the author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. She lives in New York City.



James W. Lewis
http://aalbc.com/authors/james_w_lewis.html

Lewis was born on an Army base in Wurzburg, Germany in 1971, but grew up in a small city called Hopewell, Virginia. As a shy kid, he shared a strong love for sports and reading. He spent a lot of time in the summer either riding his BMX bike imitating Evil Knevil on the dirt hills of local parks or holed up in the Hopewell library, lost in the wondrous world of books. It was hours in the library that developed a love for reading and writing short stories.



George C. Fraser
http://aalbc.com/authors/george_fraser.html

Fraser is Chairman & CEO of FraserNet, Inc. He is considered by many to be the new voice for African Americans and one of the foremost authorities on networking and building effective relationships. Mr. Fraser is the author of two books: Success Runs In Our Race; The Complete Guide to Effective Networking in the African American Community (a critically acclaimed bestseller) and Race For Success; The Ten Best Business Opportunities for Blacks In America (selected as one of ten best business books of the year by Booklist). Both were published by the William Morrow Company.



Louise Meriwether
http://aalbc.com/authors/louise_meriwether.html

Meriwether is a short fiction writer, essayist, novelist, writer of children's literature, and black activist. Louise Meriwether holds an established place among literati whose writings reassess African Americans' past. Her fiction treats bygone times to revise American history and to record African Americans' tremendous achievements despite overwhelming odds



Dwayne McDuffie
http://aalbc.com/authors/dwayne_mcduffie.htm

McDuffie is best known as the co-founder and creator of Milestone Media. He is a Story Editor on the KIDS WB's Emmy Award-winning animated series STATIC SHOCK, which he co-created. He is also a Producer and Story Editor on Cartoon Network's JUSTICE LEAGUE. He is Editor-In-Chief of Milestone Media's award-winning line of comic books, managing an editorial operation which boasted the best on-time delivery record in the industry for nearly four years running and has also worked as an editor for Marvel Comics and Harvey Entertainment. 

Tragically McDuffie pasted this February, just after his 49th birthday.

AALBC.com Book Reviews (Fiction)

Friends 2 Lovers by Jonathan Anthony Burkett
http://aalbc.com/reviews/friends_2_lovers.html

Who doesn’t remember their first love? And what about the girl next door? Or how about the boy you cared for in school only to end up in the friend zone? In Jonathan Anthony Burkett’s new novel, he attempts to capture that feeling young people get when the bonds of friendship mature into something stronger.

Friends 2 Lovers is the story of high school best friends Claude and Kelly that spans over a two and a half year timeframe. Though they have been best friends for many years, everyone from their friends, family, and the protagonists themselves know that they are destined to be together. After all, the best romantic relationships start off as friendships anyway, right? Even Kelly’s mother loves Claude like a son. However, it’s the actions that transpire with Claude’s family that could threaten this relationship and even his life.



Am I Not a Man? by Mark L. Shurtleff
http://aalbc.com/reviews/am_i_not_a_man.htm

What a curious book to be written by Mark L. Shurtleff, Utah's Attorney General!

This well-researched historical novel, Am I Not A Man?, goes into the mind of Dred Scott, an illiterate slave who endured the agony of bondage and all of its cruelty from his early days in Virginia until his classic legal battles to over-turn the restrictive laws of slavery. Shurtleff, a white author, never lets us forget these black men and women were human beings. He shows the reader that Dred and his wife, Harriet, were loving, caring people. He takes us into their minds and hearts and trusts us with their unrelenting humanity.



Walking Among the Kudzu by H. Victoria Hargro Atkerson
http://aalbc.com/reviews/walking_among_the_kudzu.html

Walking Among the Kudzu is a page turner that will remind you of books such as The Darkest Child, Push, and even The Color Purple. Readers who know a thing or two about the Civil Rights Era will enjoy this nostalgic tale. And those who enjoy a good story will have something to smile about as well. The characters from all walks of life feel like people you may know. Atkerson's natural writing skills will have you wondering how much of this novel comes from actual events. Though the ending is a bit mushy and predictable, and you might wish for more dialogue versus the first-person narration, it is still a very enjoyable story of hope, love, and redemption. You should definitely pick this one up.



No Surrender By Ai
http://aalbc.com/reviews/no_surrender.html

When news reached me about the death of renowned poetess, Ai, I knew that I must write something about her and her unwavering lyrical examination of the human condition in America. Her last collection, No Surrender, was released in the fall and it is an occasion to pay her tribute.

Ai was always a fierce and uncompromising voice. The author of seven memorable books of poetry, she earned the American Book Award for Sin in 1987 and a National Book Award for Vice in 1999. As the Mitte Chair in Creative Writing at Southwest Texas State University from 2002 -2003, she earned a United States Artist Ford Fellowship in 2009.

AALBC.com Book Reviews (Non-Fiction)

True You: A Journey to Finding and Loving Yourself by Janet Jackson
http://aalbc.com/reviews/true_you.html

Whenever I’ve interviewed Janet Jackson, I’ve always had the sense that I was speaking with a very grounded individual for someone who was born inside the bubble of celebrity and has lived her whole life in the limelight. Thus, I am not surprised to discover that she would seem as real and equally accessible in her autobiography.

Janet co-wrote True You: A Journey to Finding and Loving Yourself with ghostwriter to the stars David Ritz, who has also penned memoirs with Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Aretha, Etta James, B.B. King, Smokey Robinson, Natalie Cole, Grandmaster Flash, Billie Holiday, The Neville Brothers and The Wire's Felicia "Snoop" Pearson. The prolific Ritz credits his uncanny knack for the genre with an ability to become one with his subjects by "absorbing himself into the artist’s very heart and soul."



Black Business Secrets: 500 Tips, Strategies, and Resources for the African-American Entrepreneur by Dante Lee
http://aalbc.com/reviews/black_business_secrets_500_tips.html

During these dire economic times when the overall unemployment rate in the U.S. is at 9.8 %, you can be sure that that figure is at least double in the African-American community. And after the Democrats took what President Obama referred to as a “shellacking” on Election Day, they appear prepared to capitulate to the Republican demand that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy be extended.

If you’re presently out of work, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the supposedly-stimulative effect of that windfall for the rich to trickle-down to you in the form of a job. Instead, may I suggest perusing a copy of Black Business Secrets: 500 Tips, Strategies, and Resources for the African-American Entrepreneur.



Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell
http://aalbc.com/reviews/brainwashed.html

Ever since the dawn of the nation when the Founding Fathers deliberately rationalized slavery by spreading the big lie that black people were inferior, African-Americans have suffered from serious self-esteem issues. But why has this phenomenon continued to persist so long past emancipation and the elimination of the Jim Crow system of segregation?

This is the nagging thought which inspired Tom Burrell to write Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority. After all, as an advertising executive with 45 years in the business, he is well aware of the power of propaganda. So he knows that American society has done such a good job on the minds of blacks that they have not only internalized but have willingly participated in the perpetuation and further dissemination of nearly every negative stereotype propagated about them by the media.



African Rhytms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston Composed by Randy Weston
http://aalbc.com/reviews/african_rhytms.html

True jazz buffs will welcome this well-detailed, informative memoir, African Rhythms, by one of the most innovative musicians in America, Randy Weston, for it pays earnest tribute to the African origins, traditions, and their primary influence on the sounds that rose from Congo Square long ago. It is the finest jazz autobiography since that of the big band maestro Duke Ellington’s glorious remembrances, Music Is My Mistress. “Arranged” by jazz writer-producer Willard Jenkins from a collection of interviews and observations over a four year period, it spans over 60 years of Weston’s personal and creative life.



I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness to "The Blind Side" and Beyond by Michael Oher with Don Yaeger
http://aalbc.com/reviews/i_beat_the_odds.html

Michael Oher became famous a year ago when his inspirational story was made into a heartwarming Hollywood movie. That overcoming-the-odds sports saga recounted how a traumatized, black teenager went from homeless to National Football League star with the help of the a well-to-do family who rescued him from the streets of Memphis. Sandra Bullock even won an Oscar for her endearing portrayal of matriarch Leigh Anne Tuohy, a compassionate Christian who altruistically invited the gentle giant to move into her house.

But the film also took some liberties with the facts, such as suggesting that Michael only learned to play football in high school and that he was walking around wearing shorts in the middle of a frigid day in November. Furthermore, because the picture basically began with his rescue, it failed to convey exactly how much of a harrowing nightmare his childhood had been previously, when he and his siblings had been shuttled from foster home to foster home on account of their mother’s crack addiction.



12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today Edited by Gregory S. Parks and Matthew W. Hughey
http://aalbc.com/reviews/12_angry_men.html

I could write at length from personal experience about the trauma inflicted on my psyche by the time I was 25 by a decade of being routinely stopped and frisked by police about once a month or so, and always on the flimsiest of pretexts. Back then, the prison industrial complex was undergoing a mammoth growth spurt thanks to the so-called “War on Drugs,” which was really just a rationale for feeding the corporate beast with the bodies of millions of non-violent, black offenders.

And judging by the accounts related in 12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today, the situation hasn’t improved much over the interim. Here, a 35 year-old family man recalls how he was recently strip-searched right in front of his neighbors by NYPD detectives who suspected him of possessing narcotics. When they didn’t find any contraband, they left him to pull up his own pants without as much as an apology