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The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation
The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation Robert Fleming Book Review South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn’s The First Eight: A Personal Histo...
Running to Fall
Running to Fall Publishers Weekly’s Booklife Book Review This review originally appeared on Booklife Buckhanon (Speaking of Summer) reveals the emotional complexity behind the facade...
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 Kam Williams black_power_fist.jpg Film Review Black Revolution of the Sixties Revisited via Swedish Cinematic Collage The Black Power Mixtape 1967-19...
Eight Minutes of Heaven
Eight Minutes of Heaven Robert Fleming Book Review Travis English, author of Knights of Paris, returns with his second work of fiction, Eight Minutes of Heaven, a story about Derek Treadwell, w...
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky Thumper Book Review The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow is the most remarkable debut novel that I have read in years! The small novel about a young girl...
Black Power, Black Lawyer: My Audacious Quest for Justice
Black Power, Black Lawyer: My Audacious Quest for Justice Carol Taylor Book Review Much more than a memoir, Black Power, Black Lawyer traces not only Nkechi Taifa’s personal life, and her decad...
Unburdened by Conscience: A Black People’s Collective Account of America’s Antebellum So
Unburdened by Conscience: A Black People’s Collective Account of America’s Antebellum So Kam Williams Book Review "While pursuing my Bachelor of Arts degree in college, I took a lot of history cour...
Front Row Seat: A Photographic Portrait of the Presidency of George W. Bush
Front Row Seat: A Photographic Portrait of the Presidency of George W. Bush Kam Williams Book Review “I was privileged to work with Eric Draper during my entire Presidency. I got to know him ...
Dreams of My Ancestors
Dreams of My Ancestors Kam Williams Book Review “Approximately 455,000 African men, women, girls and boys were the original ancestors of the estimated 40 million African-American people i...
Help Me to Find My People: The African-American Search for Family Lost in Slavery
Help Me to Find My People: The African-American Search for Family Lost in Slavery Kam Williams Book Review “This is a book about slavery and family and loss and longing… It is about th...
Second Line Home: New Orleans Poems
Second Line Home: New Orleans Poems Rudolph Lewis Book Review June 2005, almost a decade ago, was the time I last visited New Orleans. It was still almost the Big Easy I knew in the mid-1980s. Seve...
Gathering Blossoms Under Fire
Gathering Blossoms Under Fire Robert Fleming Book Review Nobody will find the controversial writer, Alice Walker neutral, because of her fierce, unorthodox views. As an award-winning novelist, essayi...
Am I Not a Man?
Am I Not a Man? Robert Fleming Book Review 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?,...
Grasshopper Speaks
Grasshopper Speaks Emanuel Carpenter Book Review In Katrina Register’s memoir, “Grasshopper Speaks,” the author takes readers on the whirlwind journey of her life. In this debut, s...
As If Nothing Happened
As If Nothing Happened Tiffany M. Davis Book Review "And in the nine years she had known Joya, since freshman year, and in the eight years they had known Yvonne, the three had never become dist...
The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Women
The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Women Robert Fleming Book Review Identity and gender have always fascinated Catherine McKinley, one of the fewer 15,000 mixed-race child...
The Hurricane
The Hurricane Michael Dequina images/the16.37.jpg Film Review Rubin "Hurricane" Carter’s 1962 knockout punch against Florentino Fernandez came in the first round...
Who Would Have Thunk It! The First Adventures of the Fraser Foster Kids
Who Would Have Thunk It! The First Adventures of the Fraser Foster Kids Kam Williams Book Review “Our story began a very long time ago when we were little kids with no place to live. Our moth...
Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World
Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World Robert Fleming Book Review Unfortunately, there were efforts to demean the late Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family whe...
12 Years a Slave
12 Years a Slave Kam Williams 12-years-a-slave-movie-poster.jpg Film Review Chiwetel Ejiofor Stars in Adaptation of Solomon Northup’s Memoir In Theaters: Oct 18, 2013 Limited November 1,...
Blue in Green
Blue in Green Robert Fleming Book Review On August 25, 1959, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis escorts a white girl to a cab, lights a cigarette outside Birdland, and a city policeman harasses the black man...
Diary of a Lost Girl (2)
Diary of a Lost Girl (2) Chris Stevenson Book Review “There are more pyramids in the Sudan than there are in Egypt, that’s a statistical fact… and today there are still 2-3 milli...
Black Power Inc.
Black Power Inc. Rondall Brasher Book Review I would like to initiate my review of Cora Daniels’ Black Power Inc. by eluding to a quote attributed to Malcolm X, too Black’too strong. T...
Syncope
Syncope Brianna-Christine Alicea Book Review As a third-grade poet teacher, an author, and as a leader for an English conversation group for immigrants, Wadud is involved with her community. She is a...
Cowards and Angels
Cowards and Angels Robert Fleming Book Review In this slender novel, Cowards and Angels, Aileen Muhammad tries to do an almost impossible task in African American literature, to recreate a modern...
Wrapped In Rainbows
Wrapped In Rainbows Thumper Book Review Zora Neale Hurston ensured her place of prominence in the American literary canon with her masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Her career was filled w...
The History of White People
The History of White People Kam Williams Book Review "Most Americans envision whiteness as racially indivisible, though ethnically divided; this is the scheme anthropologists laid out in the mid ...
Social Crisis and Social Demoralization
Social Crisis and Social Demoralization Kam Williams Book Review ’American race relations are closely tied up with social status. Race relations’ reflect the economic and social force...
Extraordinary
Extraordinary Kam Williams Book Review "John and Angelena Rice were extraordinary, ordinary people. They were middle-class folks who loved God, family, and their country. I don’t think th...
A People’s History of the United States
A People’s History of the United States Kam Williams Book Review "There is not a country in world history in which racism has been more important, for so long a time, as the United Stat...
Adam by Adam
Adam by Adam Thumper Book Review ’Never let anyone keep you contained and never let anyone keep your voice silent.’ -Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. to a young Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. If I were...
Adam by Adam: The Autobiography of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
Adam by Adam: The Autobiography of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Thumper Book Review ’Never let anyone keep you contained and never let anyone keep your voice silent.’ -Adam Clayton Powell, ...
American Imam
American Imam Robert Fleming Book Review Taymullah Abdur-Rahman’s sharp and stylish memoir, American Imam: From Pop Stardom to Prison Abolition, concerns itself with the causes and consequences...
Medical Apartheid
Medical Apartheid Kam Williams Book Review ’The experimental exploitation of African-Americans is not an issue of the last decade or even the past few decades. Dangerous, involuntary, a...
Rough Crossings
Rough Crossings Kam Williams Book Review ’Seeing the Revolutionary War through the eyes of enslaved blacks turns its meaning upside down. ’ The vaunted war for liberty was a...
Last Man Standing
Last Man Standing Thumper Book Review The year, 2002, I decided to take Black History Month literally by reading books that expanded my scope of being black in America. I decided to read Last Man Sta...
Crazy Rich: Power
Crazy Rich: Power Kam Williams Book Review “Heirs to a Band-Aid and Baby Powder fortune, the Johnsons have enjoyed unimaginable wealth since Johnson & Johnson was founded in 1886—bu...
African American Lives 2
African American Lives 2 Kam Williams africa11.jpg Film Review Black Luminaries Find Roots in 4-Part PBS Series African American Lives 2 Click to order via Amazon Format: Color, D...
Going Home In Chains: Stories
Going Home In Chains: Stories Robert Fleming Book Review Glenville Lovell, one of the foremost Caribbean writers, has written several novels, including the acclaimed Fire in the Canes, Too Beautifu...
Ebony & Ivy: Race
Ebony & Ivy: Race Kam Williams Book Review “Ebony & Ivy… delivers a groundbreaking and incendiary exploration of the intertwined histories of slavery, race, and higher education&he...
Soul Recovery: 12 Keys to Healing Addiction
Soul Recovery: 12 Keys to Healing Addiction Kam Williams Book Review “This is a book about recovery—my recovery—from addiction to drugs, specifically cocaine. But… my addic...
Freedom at Dawn: Robert Smalls’s Voyage Out of Slavery
Freedom at Dawn: Robert Smalls’s Voyage Out of Slavery Richard Murray Book Review Frederick Douglass once said, “The American Government and the American Constitution are spoken of in a manner ...
Lay This Body Down
Lay This Body Down Thumper Book Review I may have gotten my love for reading from my mother, but I got my love of a good story from my father. He was an excellent storyteller. During my years livin...
The Presidency in Black and White: My Up-Close View of Three Presidents and Race in America
The Presidency in Black and White: My Up-Close View of Three Presidents and Race in America Kam Williams Book Review “[This book] gives readers a compelling behind-the-scenes look at race re...
I Am Jackie Robinson
I Am Jackie Robinson Kam Williams Book Review An AALBC.com Bestselling Book May/June 2015 Book Reviewed by Kam Williams “Jackie Robinson learned to be brave when he was very young. He gre...
Whippins
Whippins Thumper Book Review It’s times like these that I wish I were an editor. Whippins, Switches & Peach Cobbler, the first by Brian Egeston, is a novel that doesn’t quite make up ...
Weathering the Storm: Navigating the Anti-Social Justice Wave
Weathering the Storm: Navigating the Anti-Social Justice Wave Shaundale Rénā Book Review In writing Weathering the Storm: Navigating the Anti-Social Justice Wave, author Tiffany G. Townsend, PhD, add...
Desert Bayou
Desert Bayou Kam Williams desert34.jpg Film Review Master P Produces Provocative Post-Katrina Documentary Desert Bayou Unrated Running time: 90 minutes Studio: Cinema Libre S...
The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power
The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power Kam Williams Book Review “This study introduces readers to key figures across a spectrum of black Republican...
Seaside Stories
Seaside Stories Robert Fleming Book Review There should be more African-American fiction like this, recapturing a time when our communities were more-or-less intact and families were solid. S. R...
Rising
Rising Thumper Book Review Rising, Darnella Ford’s fictional debut is explosive. It is the story of a young girl who lives through a number of tragic occurrences. Rising hits the ground runni...
From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist
From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist Herb Boyd Book Review Like many red-blooded American boys, Bob Avakian’s early years were consumed wi...
Incognito: An American Odyssey of Race and Self-Discovery
Incognito: An American Odyssey of Race and Self-Discovery Kam Williams Book Review I grabbed the phone and punched in the number… my heart pounding… My dad… Thirty years late...
Hair Power - Skin Revolution: A Collection of Poems and Personal Essays by Black and Mixed-Race Wome
Hair Power - Skin Revolution: A Collection of Poems and Personal Essays by Black and Mixed-Race Wome Kam Williams Book Review "I can honestly say I have a passion for language… I enjoy writi...
Best Selling DVD's for 2011
Best Selling DVD's for 2011 Kam Williams https://aalbc.com/reviews/aalbcdvd1.jpg Film Review 10 Best Selling DVDs on AALBC.com for 2011 This is the Start of Part 2 (Go to Part 1) #6 • The Black Po...
Passing by Samaria
Passing by Samaria Paige Turner Book Review In the early days of the church, when doing the Lord’s work, Christians tried to pass by the town of Samaria, tried to evade visiting this unpleasan...
Evil Never Sleeps
Evil Never Sleeps Andre Seewood Book Review If the short story is a lost art, then you wouldn’t know it from reading Robert Fleming’s latest collection of story stories, Evil Never Slee...
This Leaves Me Okay
This Leaves Me Okay Ahmad Wright Book Review It is not every day that your grandmother writes you a letter. Even rarer for a grandmother with an eighth-grade education to write periodically in her ow...
Let the Lion Eat Straw
Let the Lion Eat Straw Thumper Book Review One of the residuals affect I had hoped would happen when African American literature was proven marketable was the rediscovery of previously pub...
Color Me Butterfly
Color Me Butterfly Idrissa Uqdah Book Review Domestic Abuse: A Generational Curse?This book spans a 60 year period in the lives of a family of strong African American women who survived domestic a...
Why I Sued the Bible Publishers
Why I Sued the Bible Publishers Robert Fleming Book Review If there was ever a book title that yelled its intentions, this is it. The book’s author, Bradley Fowler, one of the faithful of Presb...
Psalms of My People
Psalms of My People April R. Silver Book Review In the book Psalms of My People, author Lenny Duncan opens this work by stating: “I start this book in perhaps the most hopeless place I have eve...
Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story
Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story Shannon Simpson Book Review Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story by Ben Carson During Black History Month, one of my Facebook friends was posting pictures of influe...
Going Down South
Going Down South Thumper Book Review When I started reading books many, many years ago, I came to the conclusion that there is no drama like family drama. A few years ago when African-Ameri...
Black Prisoner of War
Black Prisoner of War Thumper Book Review I can't honestly tell you when I started watching war movies and reading books written about the American wars. In my younger years, I considered the sub...
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Kam Williams Book Review "Henrietta died in 1951 from a vicious case of cervical cancer… But before she died, a surgeon took samples of her tumor and put...
Freedom Bound
Freedom Bound Jayne Cubbage Book Review The novel Freedom bound is based on the life Anta Majigeen Ndiaya who had been captured by slave raiders from Yang Yang village in Senegal, West Africa. Auth...
Lion’s Blood
Lion’s Blood Thumper Book Review Steven Barnes, has emerged with one of the best books of 2002, a novel that explores a "what if" question; What if the United States of America had a past w...
32 Ways to Be a Champion in Business
32 Ways to Be a Champion in Business Kam Williams Book Review "While I spent 14 years in the NBA playing basketball, I always had bigger dreams of building a business empire. ...
The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America
The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America Kam Williams Book Review “How is it that a Jewish prophet from the Roman era ran so explosively into the American obsession...
Defying the Odds
Defying the Odds Kam Williams Book Review ’Whether the threat is a burning cross in a sleepy Southern town, or a female doctor bucking the whites-only hiring policies of a city h...
Life: Four Quarters Plus Overtime
Life: Four Quarters Plus Overtime Robert Fleming Book Review Life: Four Quarters Plus Overtime, is truly wisdom from the ages. In this self-help guide. Floyd Griffin Jr., a man of many notable experi...
Through The Storm
Through The Storm Linda Watkins Book Review Coming of age is no easy feat. I think everyone still cringes at mistakes made as teenagers, which came from not listening to words of wisdom from mom and...
The Original Black Elite: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era
The Original Black Elite: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era Troy Johnson Book Review I grew up in New York City’s East Harlem during the 60s and 70s. Virtually all my peers were Bl...
Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights
Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights Kam Williams Book Review “Whiteness… derives power from its status as an unmarked category… [It] nev...
An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy
An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy Ralph Ellison Book Review Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma is not an easy book for an American Negro to review. Not because he mig...
The Hiptionary
The Hiptionary Kam Williams Book Review ’Throughout the cultural evolution of the United States, Black people have consistently contributed a huge stock of colorful words, phr...
Blowback
Blowback Lynne d. Johnson Book Review Blowback is a term that was first used by the CIA in a report on the 1953 operation to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. The term is actual...
Secrets and Lies
Secrets and Lies Idrissa Uqdah Book Review For Better or For Worse Rhonda McKnight's debut novel, Secrets and Lies is about a married couple who despite their comfortable financial situation a...
Kinyarwanda
Kinyarwanda Kam Williams images/kinyarwanda_movie_poster.jpg Film Review Rwandan Tragedy Revisited in "Crash"-Like Ensemble Drama Read an interview with the film maker Alrick Brown Kinyarwanda ...
Mississippi Damned
Mississippi Damned Kam Williams mississippi-damned.jpg Film Review Mississippi Damned In Theaters: January 16, 2009 (limited) on Netflix Written and Directed by: Tina Mabry Rating: UnratedGe...
Be a Father to Your Child
Be a Father to Your Child Kam Williams Book Review ’I will be completely candid here and say that I have carried around a great deal of resentment toward older Black men since...
Stagolee Shot Billy
Stagolee Shot Billy Thumper Book Review It was because of my mother’s and aunt Janice’s love of 60’s soul music that I first encountered and fell in love with Wilson Pickett singin...
A2: A Scholarly Poetical Science Discourse
A2: A Scholarly Poetical Science Discourse Ahmad Wright Book Review Afrocentric themes find themselves cast through an academic lens of creativity, analysis, and cultural criticism in this revised, s...
Echoes of a Distant Summer
Echoes of a Distant Summer Thumper Book Review In Standing At The Scratch Line, Guy Johnson created one of the most memorable protagonists in literature with King Tremain. Johnson’s second no...
Giuliani Time
Giuliani Time Kam Williams giulia9.jpg Film Review Documentary Portrays Presidential Hopeful as Racist Mayor Giuliani Time Click to order via Amazon DVD Release Date: November 21, 2006 Run Time: ...
IDOLeyes
IDOLeyes Idrissa Uqdah Book Review A Singer’s Life Changing American Idol Experience Mandisa Hundley may well go down in history as the most talked about American Idol participant who di...
Sisters and Husbands
Sisters and Husbands Alisa Hyman Book Review ’’She believed all men had it in them to cheat. They were a different kind of beast. Yet she also believed firmly that as long...
The Power of Presence
The Power of Presence Tony Lindsay Book Review The Power of Presence is a training manual for those looking to improve life, but not merely the life of an individual but those that depend on an indiv...
The Water Dancer
The Water Dancer Tony Lindsay Book Review To mix magical realism with historical fiction is a bold task. To discuss the topic of family pride from the perspective of the offspring of a slave and a ma...
Zodiac Saga 2 The Balance of Power by Kaitlyn McKnight
Zodiac Saga 2 The Balance of Power by Kaitlyn McKnight Robert Fleming Book Review There are quality novels in the Young Adult novel market. It’s not easy or simple to do these hybrid collection...
19 Years Old & 19 Men Later: A Memoir
19 Years Old & 19 Men Later: A Memoir Kam Williams Book Review “I wrote this book as a guide for young women so that they won’t make the same mistakes I’ve made… I really...
Surviving Chaos, How I Found Peace at A Beach Bar
Surviving Chaos, How I Found Peace at A Beach Bar Carol Taylor Book Review Surviving Chaos: How I Found Peace At A Beach Bar is Harold Phifer’s memoir of childhood abuse, family dysfunction, an...
Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane’s Musical Journey
Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane’s Musical Journey Kam Williams Book Review “Music and religion were the twin forces that shaped John Coltrane’s early years. Both of his grandfathers were Me...
Transforming Pain to Power: Unlock Your Unlimited Potential
Transforming Pain to Power: Unlock Your Unlimited Potential Kam Williams Book Review “I grew up in Dayton, Ohio in a home scarred by addiction and incarceration. For most of my childhood&hell...
Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an an American Cuisine
Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an an American Cuisine Kam Williams Book Review From frontier cabins to plantation houses to the White House, from steamboat galleys and Pullman kitchens to pub...
The Dagger
The Dagger Hedi Harrington Book Review Timothy George’s 2016 novel, The Dagger, should come with a warning to all readers: “Fasten your seatbelts.” The fast-paced thriller is a sequ...
Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013)
Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013) Kam Williams the-butler.jpg Film Review Forest Whitaker Delivers Oscar-Quality Performance in Emotionally-Searing Civil Rights Saga Lee Daniels’ The Butler...
Norbit
Norbit Kam Williams norbit9.jpg Film Review Na’ve Nerdy Nice Guy Search for True Love in Eddie Murphy Vehicle Norbit Rated PG-13 for nudity, sexuality, profanity, and crude humor. Run...
The “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” Interview
The “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” Interview Kam Williams https://aalbc.com/reviews/the-butler.jpg Film Review Two-Time Oscar-Nominee Talks about His Latest Offering Photo by Pascal Le Segretain – © 2...