AALBC.com eNewsletter - October 28th 2010 -
Issue #182Celebrating Our Literary Legacy Since 1997
Kwame Daweshttp://aalbc.it/kwamed
Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica . As a poet, he is profoundly influenced by the rhythms and textures of that lush place, citing in a recent interview his "spiritual, intellectual, and emotional engagement with reggae music." His book Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius remains the most authoritative study of the lyrics of Bob Marley
Donna Hillhttp://aalbc.it/donnahill
Donna Hill has more than fifty published titles to her credit, three of which were adapted for television. She has been featured in Essence, The Daily News, USA Today, Today's Black Woman, and Black Enterprise magazine, among many others. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York, where she writes full-time.
Natasha D. Tretheweyhttp://aalbc.it/trethewey
Natasha D. Trethewey is an English professor at Emory University in Atlanta, won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 2007. Her works forge a rich intersection between the historical and autobiographical. In poems that are polished, controlled, and often based on traditional forms, Trethewey grapples with the dualities and oppositions that define her personal history: black and white, native and outsider, rural and urban, the memorialized and the forgotten. The daughter of a black mother and a white father, Trethewey grew up in a South still segregated by custom, if not by law, and her life astride the color line has inspired her recovery of lost histories, public and private.
Jarid Manoshttp://aalbc.it/jarid
Jarid Manos is author of Ghetto Plainsman and Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Great Plains Restoration Council. He has been published or written about in the New York Times and many other publications, and is a featured guest speaker nationwide. He is also a health advocate and youth worker. Through his guidance, GPRC has helped found the new Ecological Health movement which helps young people heal themselves through healing our shattered prairies and plains. A vegan athlete, Mr. Manos resides in Fort Worth and Houston, Texas, and he and Karla are parents to 11 year old Kaiden. Ghetto Plainsman is his first book.
Patricia Spears Joneshttp://aalbc.it/patjones
Born and raised in Arkansas, Patricia Spears Jones aka Patricia Jones has lived in New York City since the mid-1970s where she has been involved in the city's poetry and theater scenes as poet, editor, anthologist, teacher and former Program Coordinator for the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church and working with Mabou Mines, the internationally acclaimed theater collective. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Goethe Institute for travel and research in Germany. Green Integer selected her for The PIP Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative Poetry in English 2005-2006 . Agni selected “Sapphire” as an honorable mention for the Anne Sexton Poetry Prize in 2000.
Yusef Komunyakaahttp://aalbc.it/yusefk
Yusef Komunyakaa served in Vietnam as correspondent and editor of The Southern Cross and revived the Bronze Star. He was a Professor of English at Princeton University and is now the Global Distinguished Professor of English at New York University. Komunyakaa (born April 29, 1947) won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Kingsley-Tufts Poetry Award for his book Neon Vernacular and has won many other awards for poetic achievement. His subject matter ranges from the black general experience through rural Southern life before the Civil Rights time period and his experience as a soldier during the Vietnam War.
Bridgett M. Davishttp://aalbc.it/bridgett
Bridgett M. Davis was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She is a graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta, and Columbia University, where she received a MS in Journalism. As an Associate Professor of English at Baruch College in New York, she teaches Creative Writing and Journalism. She is also an independent filmmaker. Her award-winning feature film, Naked Acts, was theatrically released in 1998 and is now available on DVD and video nationwide. Touted by Variety as "fresh, funny and original," the drama about a young black actress' refusal to disrobe for the camera has screened in international festivals throughout the US, Europe, Brazil and Africa. Naked Acts has also aired on the premium cable Sundance Channel.
AALBC.com Book Reviews (Fiction)
An Inconvenient Friend by Rhonda McKnighthttp://aalbc.it/rhondamcknight
Themes of forgiveness, redemption and truth make this story line an inspirational tale of two women both locked in pain and sadness. The author shows the realities of a struggling Christian marriage when two people are unequally yoked. I cried with Angelina. I wanted so much more for Samaria and I even understood Greg's struggles. This book will take the reader in many different emotional places on the outside looking in.
Although a sequel; this novel stands alone as a testimony to the inner good in most people who are striving to find God in their lives. It was an all-night read!
AALBC.com Book Reviews (Non-Fiction)
Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work by Edwidge Danticathttp://aalbc.it/createdangerously
["Art for art's sake"] Has this attitude been widely-embraced or might it merely reflect the values of members of a leisure class able to ignore pressing issues of survival faced by the bulk of humanity? The question is legit, for flying in the face of that bourgeois aesthetic is Edwidge Danticat, an iconoclast who sees addressing the prevailing political and social questions of the day as a pivotal part of her calling.
A 2009 winner of a MacArthur Genius Fellowship, Ms. Danticat’s contrary approach ostensibly emanates from the fact that she was born in Haiti and had to spend her formative years under the thumb of the ruthlessly repressive Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier regimes. And in Create Dangerously, a collection of essays based on a series of lectures delivered at Princeton University, the American immigrant tackles a variety of universal themes apt to resonate with anyone reflecting about the oppression they left behind in coming to the United States in search of fundamental freedoms, particularly Freedom of Speech.
Why Do I Have To Think Like A Man? How To Think Like A Lady And Still Get The Man by Shanae Hall with Rhonda Frosthttp://aalbc.it/thinklikealady
Faithful readers are well aware of how exasperated this critic has become about the recent flood of relationship advice books aimed at the African-American demographic. The latest contribution to the burgeoning genre is this how-to tome written from the female perspective by a couple of cutie pies who have a bone or two to pick with comedian Steve Harvey’s best seller on the subject.
The authors claim to be your average females, but that’s just not the case, judging from their photos (Va-va-va-voom!) and the fact that one of them, Shanae Hall, was once married to an NFL star. Furthermore, these divorcees don’t claim to have any professional credentials, rather merely a lifetime of experience in the battle-of-the-sexes.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkersonhttp://aalbc.it/thewarmth
What was most compelling and depressing about this documentary was how hated Blacks were both by their southern oppressors and the working class northerners who viewed them as a threat to their status. What was inspiring was how these pioneers persevered, kept on pushing, their eyes on the proverbial prize, as they drew from the inner strength that 400 years of degradation couldn’t kill.
I can’t say enough about the skills and artistry of the author a young black woman from Washington DC, whose parents were migrants from the south. As dense as this book was, it was a “painless” read with its seamless narrative and characters that came to life. The only problem I had was how she made no mention of the black migrants who after coming north, left the metropolises to settle in their suburbs. My parents moved from Chicago in 1922, becoming members of the black colonies who occupied their own little sections of the villages and towns that ringed the big cities, removed from the hazards of urban life, leading less stressful existences. This once again reminded me of how the black experience varies, and how mine is not that typical.
The Grace of Silence: A Memoir by Michele Norrishttp://aalbc.it/michelenorris
Quite surprisingly, it turns out that her heartbreaking memoir moved me to tears, as she wistfully recounts her family’s quiet, dignified way of dealing with racism and discrimination. Whether it was her parents having to witness a mass exodus of their neighbors via white flight after integrating a neighborhood in Minnesota in the early Sixties or, decades later, her father Belvin’s being teased for being drunk when he was actually suffering from a malignant brain tumor during the last days of his life, Michele describes lives painfully limited in certain respects by the color line.
She further recalls a litany of humiliations endured by relatives before she was born, such as her maternal grandmother who was employed by Quaker Oats to travel around the country dressed as Aunt Jemima in bandana and apron to give pancake cooking demonstrations at State Fairs and the like. Particularly poignant is the painstaking lengths she goes to resurrect the besmirched name of her father long after being falsely accused of a crime.
Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow: A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix by Gary Goliohttp://aalbc.it/jimi_book
Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) was a flamboyant rock icon who flamed out instead of fading away due to his also being a substance abuser who dabbled in everything from alcohol to marijuana to amphetamines to hashish to heroin to LSD before succumbing at the tender age of 27 to a combination of red wine and sleeping pills. Ostensibly enough time has elapsed since his passing that Hendrix can now serve as a role model to children, at least in terms of overcoming childhood adversity, exploring one’s creativity and, of course, making beautiful music.
Thus, he is appropriately the subject of Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow, an autobiography designed for 4th though 8th graders which focuses primarily on the legendary guitarist’s formative years spent growing up and exploring in Seattle. Faithful factually to what actually transpired in Jimi’s life, the book touches on such significant milestones as his acquiring his first ukulele, guitar and, later, electric guitar.
Say It Loud! Great Speeches on Civil Rights and African-American Identity Edited by Catherine Ellis and Stephen Drury Smithhttp://aalbc.it/say-it-loud
Five years ago, Catherine Ellis and Stephen Drury Smith published an anthology comprised of many of the greatest civil rights speeches delivered by African-American leaders in the 20th Century [Say It Plain: Live Recordings of the 20th Century's Great African-American Speeches: A Book-and-CD Set], including classic orations by Dr. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, Thurgood Marshall, Minister Louis Farrakhan, Julian Bond and Fannie Lou Hamer, to name a few. Now, the authors are publishing book number two, but the question becomes, what do you do for an encore when you've already used up a lot of the best stuff?
Well, it looks like maybe you look over to the right, politically, and add to the mix addresses by some relatively-conservative black folks to feature next to the usual suspects such as Dr. King, Malcolm X, Roy Wilkins, Bobby Seale and Angela Davis. What does it mean when alongside these firebrands we find the words of Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Ward Connerly, who built his career by appealing not to fellow African-Americans but to right-wing white zealots?
White House Diary by President Jimmy Carter by President Jimmy Carterhttp://aalbc.it/whitehousediary
And thanks to a tip from President Nixon who made the suggestion the first time they met, Carter decided to start keeping a journal while he was in office. If you remember, Jimmy had a certain, down-home folksy charm which had endeared him to the electorate, and that same tone is reflected in White House Diary, a 600-page opus condensed from what was originally over 5,000-pages in length.
The former president augmented the chronologically-arranged text with a sprinkling of present-day commentary where necessary to help elucidate the material. Basically, the book offers both a broad look at the scope of the Chief Executive’s exhausting daily schedule as well as an intimate peek inside the workings of the man’s mind.
Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family by Condoleezza Ricehttp://aalbc.it/condirice
Given all that Condoleezza Rice went on to accomplish in life, it’s hard to believe that she was born in Birmingham, Alabama in the fifties during the repressive reign of Jim Crow segregation. But somehow, despite spending her formative years in a city where state-sanctioned discrimination served to frustrate the aspirations of most other African-Americans, she miraculously managed to overachieve with the help of doting parents blessed with the sense to recognize their gifted daughter’s great potential and to nourish her dreams the best they could.
The former secretary of State pays tribute to that herculean effort in “Extraordinary, Ordinary People,” a remarkably-revealing memoir by a very private, public figure who has to this juncture in life played her cards pretty close to the vest. But you had a sense something might be up when she recently played piano behind Aretha at a concert in Philadelphia. And after reading this intimate autobiography it’s clear that underneath that seemingly-steely veneer beats the heart is an introspective sister who’s yearning to recognize her roots.
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