Linda Chavis

Hey Lili - I've read some of the books on your list since you posted it:

32 Candles by Ernessa T. Carter – a fun coming of age story. I enjoyed the characterization of the heroine and Nicky and Mama Jane were favorites.

Murder on the Down Low by Pamela Samuels Young [buying Time was on the list but I got this one instead]. This is a sista-girl book with the downlowbrother twist. I haven’t read this type of book in quite a while and liked it well enough.

Small Island by Andrea Levy. Jamaicans trying to make it work in England after WW2. Same crap different country.

Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich – just about the most depressing book I’ve read in a long time. I had to finish it just to see who would survive.

Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende – love an historical novel. Slave stories, not so much.

Thanks again!

Crystal

Hi Crystal. I really enjoyed 32 Candles. Im a member of RAWSISTAZ and I believe we are having a Twitter chat with her soon, so if your on Twitter look out for it. You can follow me: LindaChavis to find out when. Our chats are #Blackbookchats

This is what I ended up reading during the challenge:

30 Books/90 Days 2010 Reading List

1. The Living Blood/ Tananarive Due

2. Blood Colony / Tananarive Due

3. 32 Candles / Ernessa T Carter

4. Murder in the Hamptons / Danita Carter

5. Blood On The Leaves / Jeff Stetson

6. Secrets of Newberry / Victor McGlothin

7. Holy Rollers / ReShonda Tate Billingsley

8. Songs of Deliverance/Marilyn Griffith

9. Sins of the Mother / Victoria Christopher Murray

10. Standing At The Scratch Line / Guy Johnson

11. Echoes Of A Distant Summer / Guy Johnson

12. Keeping the Faith /Faith Evans

13. Red Hats / Damon Wayans

14.Who Fears Death / Nnedi Okorafor

15. Buying Time / Pamela Samuels Young

16. Shadow Tag / Louise Erdrich

17. Small Island / Andrea Levy

18. The Cheating Curve / Paula T Renfroe

19. What Mother Never Told Me / Donna Hill

20. Everything You Owe Me / Shay Nolon

21. Diary Of A Stalker / Electa Rome Parks

22. From Cape Town with Love / Blair Underwood/ Due/Barnes

23. Big Girls Do Cry/ Carl Weber

24. Be Careful What You Pray For / Kimberla Lawson Roby

25. Stepping Out On Nothing / Byron Pitts

26. Walk Like You Have Somewhere To Go/ Lucille O’Neal

27. The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives/ Lola Shoneyin

28. In My Fathers House/ E Lynn Harris

29. Island Beneath the Sea / Isabel Allende

30. Duplicity / Oasis

31. Known To Evil / Walter Mosley

32. Black Diamond 2:Nicety / Brittani Williams

33. Unspoken Lies/ Darrien Lee

34. Lets Get Free: A Hip Hop Theory of Justice / Paul Butler

35. Still Wifey Material: Part 4/ KiKi Swinson

36. My Soul To Keep/ Tananarive Due

37. Jesus Boy /Preston L Allen

38. The Other Wes Moore/Wes Moore

39. Mother Wit / Angelia Vernon Menchan & Dera R Williams

40. The Personal History of Rachel DuPree/ Ann Weisgarber

41. Unraveled/ Maxx Kilbourne

42 Unnappily In Love /Trisha R Thomas

43. The Bourne Objective / Eric VanLustbader

44. Tempted by Trouble / Eric Jerome Dickey

45. More Church Folks/ Michele Andrea Brown

46. The Path To Freedom: Black Families in New Jersey/Walter D Greason

47. A Million Blessings / Angela Benson-Marilyn Griffith-Tia McCollors

Ntozake Shange’s choreo/play FOR COLORED GIRLS, on which the film is based, views the world from the perspective of a group of black women. If Perry had changed that in bringing the play to the screen he would truly have done damage to a great work. Of course, the film presents the world from the perspective of those women. What else would one have expected Perry to do? The major female characters (with a couple of exceptions) are those that were in the choreo/play, the dialogue they speak at critical moments in their sagas is taken from the choreo/play, many of the crises that are fleshed out in the film were alluded to by the women in the oochoreo/play. The film is an adaptation of the stage work rather than a literal rendering of it, as is any film based on a play.

JohnH

And there you have it

LiLi

“Character assassination on a massive scale”, “sick cartoons”, those are some of the terms used by blog critics to describe Tyler Perry’s portrayal black men in FOR COLORED GIRLS. The same kinds of comments were made when the orginal opened on the stage years ago. My advice as a black man to other black men is, “lighten up”. The FOR COLORED GIRLS stories are about relationships and are told from the perspective of women. Any set of stories about relationships told from the perspective of women, whether they be Hispanic women, oriental women, Jewish women, or whatever, are going to present men in a problematic light. It’s inherent in the endeavor. The thing to do is not get up-tight about it. A better approach is to try to distill out the core of truth that may be present in one or another of the FOR COLORED GIRL stories in an effort to better understand the relationship one is in.

-----As I discuss in my recent book FACES IN THE MIRROR: OSCAR MICHEAUX AND SPIKE LEE, it is understandable that black men are sensitive about how they are portrayed on the screen given they have often been mocked and demeaned (think Stepin Fetchit, Willie Best, and Mantan Moreland.) But a FOR COLORED GIRLS is really about conversations couples might begin if it makes sense in terms of where they are in their relationship. And of they are at a place both are happy with then it's just another movie they discuss over a pizza after the show.

Johnh

Thank you for saying the same thing I have been saying...sort of..you added depth.

LiLi

Linda. I did not see the movie.

Would a well meaning man be justified by having issues with how the Black male characters were portrayed in this flick?

Hi Troy..first of all..this is probably not going to be a movie all men will be able to watch for several reasons. The stories in the movie were written by a woman as you and most men know. I say most because there are men who have no clue who Ntozake Shange is and her work. That she wrote this on the 70's but that these issues are still with us in 2010. With that said, SOME men will understand that the characters are not a reflection on the majority of men but we can not bury our heads in the sand and say there are NO men who act out in the ways the men on the screen do. In my own life I have know everyone of those men. So, I would say to a man who is willing to go see the movie and judge it on the "entertainment" value alone that it is a good movie based on the acting perhaps not the subject matter. Is it dark, yep. Is it fun, no. But if the man is willing to understand the above I stated, it makes for a great discussion of SOME issues men and women do have.

::poutin:: name left off

I LOVED the movie, will see it again and cant wait for it to come out on DVD.

Thump or anyone..did you read Some Sing Some Cry by Ntozake Shange & Ifa Bayeza..yet..? I just finished it and thought it was great.

LiLi

You Tube didnt work..what did they discuss?

F. Scott stinks save for "The Crackup" and "The Great Gatsby"

Your a THREAD KILLER

Hello All,

There are several reasons why Black Literature is languishing

1.) Education - Let's keep it real or keep it moving; it has turned out that the education that a black person could get back in the day, not accounting for the deplorable school systems down South, was a lot better. Today with all of these fancy new teaching methods and technology, we have a few generations that are a few notches above illiterate. Don't believe me. Sit down with a couple of our children and ask them to read you a story. 3/4 of them, after reading to you out loud, will put fear into you concerning the future. I don't see nothing wrong with looking up words in a dictionary. It's called vocabulary building. But, then I was educated in another age and not the current one.

2.) I don't care how post Obama some industries claim to be, many in the publishing industries are still racist. Let's face it, we, the black audience reinforced their prejudice. That big book boom we had, we destroyed. Because we didn't "spread" the love and stayed stuck on the You-Go-Girl books, and then the thug books, the higher ups in the industry, kept pumping them out. Because in their eyes, these were the only books they could make a profit off of. We didn't try reading those other books because they were "too hard" (this also links back to my first point). And because the publishers were marketing those books just to black women, they figured there's no need to have any quality control or even to make sure the author could actually write and read English at a high school senior level (again, reference back to point 1), we got a lot of books thrown at us that was pure de sh_t!! What was bound to happen next, did happen; these same black women that was so pumped up reading that trash, got tired of reading the same story over and over and over again. This in turned the publishers profits to sh_t, which in turn lead them to the decision that there's not need publishing black authors (because they have all been lumped into the same category now) because there's no money in it. Now this falls under the category of "be careful what you wish for, you might get it".

3.) Not all Black Literature is languishing, it depends on where you look. If you have been following me this year, I have shown my love for the books from a small independent publisher, Akashic Books. This year they've published Jesus Boy by Preston Allan and Glorious by Bernice McFadden. They are still a small, small few still at the big publishing houses like Eric Jerome Dickey. For the most part, the books are out here, you just have to look for them. This is not new for a lot of us who are use to looking for black fiction and black history books. For instance, right now I'm reading The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker by Alice Walker. I am learning, to my great shame, that Alice Walker has a vast literary legacy. There is more to her literary output than just The Color Purple, or the two novels by her that I have read. I did not know Walker had written so much poetry, essays, or short stories. I also did not know that at one time she belonged to a group of black female writers who called themselves The Sisterhood. Walker and Toni Morrison are the only two members of that group whose works are still in print today.

We need to do better than this people. We have got to learn to support our new authors as well as elders. There's really no reason for us not doing our part, because we still have to go that extra mile or extra step to get to where we ought to be, need to be, should be.

And there you have it !

Linda

As with any other genre, I like to read a well-written work of fiction featuring a plausible story with a compelling plot line.

What inspires me in a novel is when the characters are so well-developed that they become real people who I either like or dislike.

I'd say I'm a pretty typical reader.

What she said. It aint complicated.

Linda

(No. Nobody reads that sh*t. White people don't either, if you haven't been paying attention.

Now go over on the Stormfront website and discuss this with your uncles)

Stop being evil..people do read that sh*t

You know, it's pretty good to read a lot of books.

But what are you retaining?

Is this just some marathon excercise? What good to read a book, forget everything you read, and start all over again?

There are some great books and great writers I read over and over again--the great ones you always discover something new.

Some of the books are in fact more memorable than others. Are you trying to imply that I cant read this many books and get anything out of it? I've been reading since I was born..and frankly I have no idea what in da hail your talking about. I have a suggestion..why dont you join me..instead of trying to figure it out..

Im reading this now and really enjoying the story. I agree Crystal..some of it is brutal to read. I'm only 66 pages in...

This was very good

Updated list of books read so far:

What Mother Never Told Me / Donna Hill

Big Girls Do Cry / Carl Weber

In My Father’s House / E. Lynn Harris

The Cheating Curve / Paula T Renfroe

Duplicity / Oasis

Everything You Owe Me / Shay Nolon

A Million Blessings / Angela Benson/Marilynn Griffith/Tia McCollors

Island Beneath The Sea / Isabel Allende

Be Careful What You Pray For / Kimberla Lawson Roby

From Capetown With Love / Blair Underwood

Buying Time / Pamela Samuels-Young

Diary Of A Stalker / Electa Rome Parks

Walk Like You Have Somewhere To Go / Lucille O’Neal

Sins Of The Mother / Victoria Christopher Murray

Songs of Deliverance / Marilynn Griffith

Holy Rollers / Reshonda Tate Billingsley

Secrets of Newberry / Victor McGlothin

All those books in 90 days Linda, impressive.

I always recommend Standing at the Scratch Line to dudes looking for a good read.

Chris who is Janelle Monae?

Im on my 18th book and I havent read most of those books LOL I have to post my new list...

Im reading this now and really enjoying the story. I agree Crystal..some of it is brutal to read. I'm only 66 pages in...

Hello All,

I'm about to be out of commissioned. I'm fixin to start reading Three Days Before The Shooting by Ralph Ellison. In case you're not familiar with Three Days, Three Days is the compilation, for lack of a better word, of all of the written pieces of the second novel Ralph Ellison was writing at the time of his death. Ellison had been working on the novel following his first novel, Invisible Man, for over 40 years before his death. After he died, his literary executor, John Callahan, edited and released Juneteenth. Juneteenth was not the novel, but a small number of writings that Ellison had written in which Callahan assembled together. At the time, it was stated that all of the different pieces, stories, et al, would be collected for study only, not released to the general reading audience at large. I ain't going to lie, I felt somewhat slighted about that. Evidently I wasn't alone. The higher ups must have been feeling generous because they put the whole thing out, in one volume, thus, Three Days Before The Shooting. Three Days is over 1000 pages long. Yeah...now you all know I have a thing about BABs (Big Ass Books). I don't like reading them. Frankly, BABs tend to scare the hell out of me and I avoid them like the plague. Stephen King is just about the only author that can put out a book this big and I'll read it. The Harry Potter books comes in a close second. Other than that, I'd rather skip over it. But, I'm going to tackle this big sucka! So, I'm letting you all know...*sniffle, sniffle*...that if you don't hear from me again...*sniffle*...it's been good, most of the time! Cynique, I wuv U--like a big second, third remove, distant cousin. Carey, it's been swell. Crystal, give Mosley another try. I want you all to pray for me, I'm about to go to that land of BAB and I may never return. *with the song I'm Standing in the Need of Prayer playing in the background* *LOL*

I tried and failed to read this...

I agree with you both. I'm loving the McGill character and look forward to the next one. I think we need a movie? Forrest W. as McGill..??

Wonderful, literate, uplifting.

It makes my blood boil.

Where is the Janelle Monae?

Im weird. I dont listen to music when I read. Now the TV is on..though depending..I may turn it down low..but for some reason my mind wanders to much if muisic is playing HA HA

Im part of a reading challenge on NING and I thought I would share my list I will read over the next 90 days:

1. Betsey Brown / Ntozake Shange

2. The Street / Ann Petry

3. The Salt Eaters / Toni Cade Bambara

4. Brown Girl, Brownstones / Paule Maeshall

5. Blood On The Leaves/Jeff Stetson

6. Sinful / Victor McGlothin

7. Trail Of Crumbs / Kim Sunee

8. Sweeter The Juice / Shirlee Taylor Haizlip

9. Destination Romance /6 authors

10. Standing At The Scratch Line / Guy Johnson

11. Echoes Of A Distant Summer / Guy Johnson

12. Keeping the Faith / Faith Evans

13. Red Hats / Damon Wayans

14. Who Fears Death / Nnedi Okorafor

15. Buying Time / Pamela Samuels Young

16. Shadow Tag / Louise Erdrich

17. Small Island / Andrea Levy

18. The Cheating Curve / Paula T Renfroe

19. What Mother Never Told Me / Donna Hill

20. Jesus Boy / Preston L Allen

21. Diary Of A Stalker / Electa Rome Parks

22. From Cape Town with Love / Blair Underwood/ Due/Barnes

23. Big Girls Do Cry / Carl Weber

24. Be Careful What You Pray For / Kimberla Lawson Roby

25. Stepping Out On Nothing /Byron Pitts

26. Walk Like You Have Somewhere To Go / Lucille O’Neal

27. Brother West Living and Loving Out Loud / Cornel West

28. My Fathers House / E Lynn Harris

29. Island Beneath the Sea / Isabel Allende

30. A Million Blessings / Benson, Griffith, McCollors

31. 32 Candles / Ernessa T. Carter

32. Sins of the Mother / Victoria Christopher Murray

33. Duplicity / Oasis

34. Murder In The Hamptons / Danita Carter

Karrine Steffans

Wrote AALBC.com's All Time Bestselling Book

I have no desire to live "vicariously" through anything as demeaning as being a domestic to Miz Anne. And I certainly have no desire to move down south like you apparently did, Soulful Sister. BTW, I'm sure Hispanic immigrants are going through these same experiences today. Domestics of any race are subjected to the whims and insensitivity to their employers. It comes with the territory.

None of this, however, neutralizes the irony of how the black experience differs from location to location. As I have previously mentioned, back in the early 1950s when I was a student at the University of Illinois and lived in the newly-integrated womens' residence halls, the year before a defiant Rosa Parks was arrested, me and my black dorm-mates, who elected to all eat our meals at the same table when we sat down to dinner in the dining room, were served by white waiters and waitresses, who were working their way through college - and who seemed to have no problem with catering to us. People have expressed skepticism about this, but it is true, and it is what it is. An AKA soror was also elected homecoming queen during that era. I dropped out of the U. of I. after 2 years and I have been reminded by others who followed, that things changed on campus when racial tensions began to surface. But this was my black experience and who is to say it is not authentic?

I feel you Ms Cynique ! I rated it a 3 also.

LiLi, dump out those books and put that bag over your head.