Troy

I just learned that Esther Copper Jackson passed away August 25, 2022, just a few days after her 105th birthday. She was grow woman when @Cynique was born 😉 The video above was taken when she was 96! I understand that she was spark until the end of her life.

Yep, Book Review: Guiou: The Other Blacks, Second Edition The latter group, known as Garifuna, arrived from Nigeria by way of St. Vincent where they blended with Carib Indians beginning in 1635 before migrating to Guatemala. By contrast, the former group was brought there to work the fields only about a hundred years ago by the United Fruit Company, settling in an area called Colonia.

Until ultimately it will end. Oppression by one group of another always ends... it is really just a matter of how much damage is done first. @Michel Montvert thanks for sharing those stories. The cure for cancer may have died in some ghetto -- you can pick the country. @Cynique Simone is the GOAT. Anyone obliquely familiar with the sport knows this. I can't speak for the others, but I know inspiration comes from many sources not just the GOAT. This piqued my interest because I was involved in the sport, one in which there are not many Black participants, for all the reasons mentioned.

To continue to enrich those that benefit from the system. @daniellegfny i remember Dominque 🙂 interestingly i drew inspiration from the best gymnasts regardless of there so called race. They could be Russian or Japanese it did not really matter i had a poster of Japanese dude on my wall for years as a teenager. This was before Americans were very competitive before Kurt Thomas and them… there was a brother from the Bronx Mario Mecuteon (sp?) he would have been an Olympian but Carter boycotted that one — a great gymnast i have no idea what happened to him after that…

Yes it has, but access is still lacking. When i was a kid many schools had gymnastics teams. Today there are far fewer programs. I’d be surprised if there are any girls gymnastics teams in the New York City public schools. NYC Pools used to have diving boards and you could find trampolines at your local boys club all of these are gone today. Now in the more upscale areas you’ll find many private programs, but these take money, time, and resources many Black families don’t have. My family never paid for a single gymnastics lesson. My teammates in college went to summer camps for gymnastics that was something unfathomable to me. It is harder for girls. Title IX basically cut men gymnastics programs rather that creating programs for women. Syracuse Eliminated men’s gymnastics and never had a woman’s team (as far as i know) the same reason ghettos lack all kinds of resources, Structural racism.

As a former gymnast i can tell you there were plenty of inspired Black female gymnasts. Inspiration comes from all levels not just the highest. Our biggest disadvantage is lack of access. I was a D1 gymnast at Syracuse University. I did not start doing gymnastics until i was in high school — unless you count flipping on discarded mattresses. All of my team mates were already accomplished gymnasts by the time i got started. there was so so much talent in the ghetto that never realized their potential.

Divorces destroy wealth and should be done with much more thought than entering into marriage Mr. or Mrs. good enough, or OK, is no longer acceptable, though it is far and away the most likely outcome. No one is perfect or can be all things to someone. If two white woman want to share one Black man, great if it works for them. Our society is not designed or set up for these types of familial configurations — we haven’t even come to terms with “mixed race” relationships let alone polygamous ones — so they will have more difficulty that a traditional relationship, which is already challenging.

That sounds like a great idea for the forum. The question as always is participation. I have not read a romance novel in eons so I can't even participate. But if you do something on the forum I'll share it in my newsletter (August 30th).

The Fame Game: An Insider’s Playbook for Earning Your 15 Minutes: Legendary Hollywood entertainment manager and publicist Ramon Hervey II shares insightful tales of his remarkable career in The Fame Game. Having worked with everyone from Little Richard, Bette Midler, and the Bee Gees, to Aaliyah, Rick James, and Vanessa Williams —this juicy and addictive retrospective also traces the origins of fame and how social media is changing the rules. Available now! AALBC Book Reviews The Juju Girl by Nikki Marsh Awarded by the 2022 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Self Published ebook in fiction by an African American author, Nikki Marsh’s The Juju Girl has everything an outstanding YA book should possess. Gabbie, a 15-yer-old girl, comes into her own after she is forced to flee from her small town along the Mississippi River by the powerful Great Storm of 1893, On the brink of womanhood, she arrives in New Orleans and is thrust into the class-conscious Creole Society, finding herself a stranger in a strange culture. Read the Full Review ▶ Authors Your Should Know “Black women, contrary to anything else you may have heard or may think, are at the center of their world.” — Nellie Y. McKay Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, professor of English, creative writing and African literature at Penn State Altoona, has been selected as the 2023 recipient of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award from Saginaw Valley State University. Wesley, “one of the most prolific African poets of the twenty-first century,” immigrated to the United States with her family during the 14-year Liberian civil war, a war that has helped shape her writing as a Diaspora African woman writer in the United States. For more than two decades, Wesley’s poetry has given voice to the voiceless, the hundreds of thousands of Liberian war dead through its exploration of themes on the plight of the refugee of war, the new African Diaspora mother/wife and African femininity, motherhood, home, displacement, and the survivor as a witness. Learn More ▶ Jasmine Guillory is a New York Times bestselling author. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Bon Appetit, and Time, and she is a frequent book contributor on The Today Show. She lives in Oakland, California. Her latest novel, By the Book, earned a ton of honors including; Harper’s Bazaar Best Romantic Books of 2022, USA Today’s Bestseller, Apple’s Best Book of 2022, The Root’s Books We Can’t Wait to Read, and other accolades. Learn More ▶ Nellie Y. McKay (May 12, 1930 – January 22, 2006) was a pivotal figure in contemporary American letters. The author of several books, McKay is best known for coediting the canon-making Norton Anthology of African American Literature with Henry Louis Gates Jr., which helped secure a place for the scholarly study of Black writing that had been ignored by white academia. However, there is more to McKay's life and legacy than her literary scholarship. After her passing, new details about McKay’s life emerged, surprising everyone who knew her. Why did McKay choose to hide so many details of her past? Biographer and scholar, Shanna Greene Benjamin examined McKay's path through the professoriate to learn about the strategies, sacrifices, and successes of contemporary Black women in the American academy. Read more in Nellie Y. McKay’s 2021 biography, Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay ▶ The Top 50 Black-Owned Websites Our mission includes uplifting and supporting websites created for, and by, Black people. As the World Wide Web becomes increasingly controlled by a handful of extremely powerful corporations, content created by Black people which showcases Black culture is increasingly marginalized. All of us, regardless of background, enjoy a less rich experience on the web as a result. Check our Top 50 ▶ The Following is Sponsored by Tiny Reparations Books A Black Texan family gathers to say goodbye to their matriarch, and as they do, long-held secrets begin to bubble to the surface. From a fresh new voice in Black fiction comes a heartfelt family saga about what we inherit and the power of forgiveness. Tackling themes of race, class, and legacy, Perish is the story of every family that has struggled to understand the invisible forces that shape generations. “Readers will discover their own strength and ability to move past intergenerational trauma—and embrace their roots along the way.” —BUST magazine • Buy Now ▶ Dear Reader, Here I’m rockin’ my “Black Authors Matter” (available at Cush City) at the National Book Club Conference. The conference was a lovely event and a great opportunity to meet authors in the company of other book lovers. I applaud Curtis Bunn (check his video) for running this event for 20 years! Your support is crucial to helping us improve AALBC..com. Your paid subscriptions, book purchases, suggestions, engagement on the site, social sharing, advertisements, and feedback help support AALBC’s mission of celebrating Black culture through books. Peace and Love, Troy Johnson Founder & Webmaster, AALBC.com This newsletter is sponsored by Amistad and Tiny Reparations Books Consider sponsoring our eNewsletter or a dedicated email. ★ AALBC.com eNewsletter – August 23, 2022 - Issue #366

I don't like the sound of the IRS ramping up enforcement, for these resources usually go after low-hanging fruit, that is people without the resources to defend themselves like small businesses and lower-middle class citizens. But we will see... It will be interesting to see what the obama care subsides look like and will that translate into better health care. At some point American plutocrats and oligarchs will have to share something with the rest of us, otherwise shit will hit the fan and even the uber wealth really don't want to see America fall into anarchy. 2024 will be a very telling year.

Good. It is lost on me why you can't understand why we did not post negative reviews on your word -- a stranger on a discussion forum. If you are 62-year-old software developer, one would think this would be obvious, Have you considered that fact that you might be a white racist trying to get us to slam a Black manager? How can we tell? It seems to me with your age and experience you would have been able to navigate this experience better. Have you considered calling a hiring manager a "white racist asshole" on a public review forum might hurt you employment chances elsewhere? Doing that shows questionable judgement at best. As @ProfD suggested, you can become an independent contractor, there are plenty of people who do this; why you think you can't is also lost on me.

@Chevdove you r response to @Pioneer1 was prodigious in terms of detail and patience. You obviously care about the quality the dialogue you have with pioneer, because your response showed effort and thought. I don’t know if pioneer ever accepted our corrections on the word generation… there is an old saying, “words don’t have meaning people do.” Sometimes, usually i suspect, once a person demonstrates that they reject the definition of a word or distorts it to make a point it is time to move on 😉

Word Up!

Boycotts would work, but we don’t even try, let alone get tired. Doing for stuff is great too, but if we constantly choose use our oppressors overselves that will not go very far either. Welcome to america Marty 😉 Again we have the tools to fight, we simply don’t have the collective will and fortitude to use them.

Yes Happy Birthday Connie may you have many more!

I'm sorry man it does not work that way. You are identified with the generation your were born into. I, for example, am a young baby boomer. most of my children are millennials, and kids born this century are Gen Z. Get it?

@Marty1960 welcome to the forum. Why do you think anyone would go through the effort of leaving a review on Glasdor for a manager they know based on the words of someone else they do not know. Explain why you think that is reasonable?

The Dr. mentioned the laws of Ma'at a lot I have shared them below. They appear in The Egyptian Book of the Dead. The 42 Laws Of Ma’at (Negative Confessions) 1- I have not committed sin 2- I have not committed robbery with violence 3- I have not stolen 4- I have not slain men and women 5- I have not stolen food 6- I have not swindled offerings 7- I have not stolen from God 8- I have not told lies 9- I have not carried away food 10- I have not cursed 11- I have not closed my ears to truth 12- I have not committed adultery 13- I have not made anyone cry 14- I have not felt sorrow without reason 15- I have not assaulted anyone 16- I am not deceitful 17- I have not stolen anyone’s land 18- I have not been an eavesdropper 19- I have not falsely accused anyone 20- I have not been angry without reason 21- I have not seduced anyone’s wife 22- I have not polluted myself 23- I have not terrorized anyone 24- I have not disobeyed the law 25- I have not been excessively angry 26- I have not cursed God 27- I have not behaved with violence 28- I have not caused disruption of peace 29- I have not acted hastily or without thought 30- I have not overstepped my boundaries of concern 31- I have not exaggerated my words when speaking 32- I have not worked evil 33- I have not used evil thoughts, words or deeds 34- I have not polluted the water 35- I have not spoken angrily or arrogantly 36- I have not cursed anyone in thought, word or deed 37- I have not placed myself on a pedestal 38- I have not stolen that which belongs to God 39- I have not stolen from or disrespected the deceased 40- I have not taken food from a child 41- I have not acted with insolence 42- I have not destroyed property belonging to God

@richardmurray can you elaborate a bit more on the diea you shared?

Cooperation and individual rule requires competence. Selecting the most competent is virtually impossible whether it is search engine or election results. Market forces, pardon the pun, trumps competence. We need to to universally provide for people's most basic needs healthcare, housing, education, and food. Once this is done, getting competent individuals or groups to lead would be much easier. Today people are so easily manipulated because their is so much need and so much intellectual immaturity

The 2022 Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards The 2022 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award honors the best in Black literature in the United States and around the globe. Introduced in 2001, the Legacy Award was the first national award presented to Black writers by a national organization of Black writers. Fiction, nonfiction, and poetry honorees are selected in a juried competition. Merit awards are given at the discretion of the Board of Directors. Each October, the award winners are celebrated during a gala that draws hundreds of literary stars, readers, and representatives of the publishing industry, the arts, media, politics, and academia. Learn More About All of the 2022 Legacy Award Nominated Books ▶ Ron Kavanaugh: Hurston/Wright Madame CJ Walker Merit Award Honoree The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation also bestows Merit Award honors. This year, Ron Kavanaugh has been honored along with, Elizabeth Alexander, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Ron is the founder of the Literary Freedom Project, a 501(c)3 tax-exempt not-for-profit arts organization that supports the literary arts through education, creative thinking, and new media. Ron has worked tirelessly and unselfishly promoting Black writers for more than a quarter of a century. His website Mosaic Books predated AALBC.com by two years and was the oldest website dedicated to Black books until it was shut down in 2014. It was Ron who originally shared the Black-owned bookstore list. Ron also published Mosaic Literary Magazine. His accomplishments are too numerous to mention here. I’m proud to call him my friend. AALBC Book Reviews Seven Sisters And A Brother (paperback): Friendship, Resistance, and Untold Truths Behind Black Student Activism in the 1960s History has recorded many instances of struggles for varied rights by a people haunted by the legacies of slavery. Yet, too often some such occurrences, though no less noteworthy, never make it into the annals of history; they exist instead as footnotes at best. With Seven Sisters and a Brother: Friendship, Resistance, and Untold Truths Behind Black Student Activism in the 1960s authors Marilyn Allman Maye, Harold S. Buchanan, Jannette O. Domingo, Joyce Frisby Baynes, Marilyn Holifield, Myra E. Rose, Bridget Van Gronigen Warren, and Aundrea White Kelly have helped ensure that their story secures a solid place in the ongoing narrative. A “choral memoir,” Seven Sisters and a Brother is a decidedly informative documentation of the efforts of eight students (seven young women and one young man) in the late 1960s to have Black students get the opportunity, resources, and support needed to acquire a balanced education at the elite Swarthmore College. Read the Full Review ▶ AALBC Mourns the Passing of Three Important Book People Terrance Dean “Terrance Dean — a beloved Denison University professor, the Columbus Museum of Art's first Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson Scholar-in-Residence, and editorial board member for The Columbus Dispatch.” Terrance transitioned on August 11, 2022, he was 53. I first met Terrance, about 20 years ago, while selling books for Kevin Powell who was doing a reading for an organization Dean founded, Men’s Empowerment. Later, when Dean’s bestselling book, Hiding In Hip Hop: On The Down Low In The Entertainment Industry—From Music To Hollywood was published I created one of my first videos of him discussing the book. He was a good Brother. Gwendolyn Osborne Gwen began her journalism career as a reviewer for The Detroit Free Press. Her work has also appeared in several national publications including Book Magazine, Mode Magazine, and The Crisis, the organizational publication of the NAACP. She also served as an associate editor for Black Issues Book Review. Gwen was an expert in Black romance novels. She provided guidance to me on the authors and books I should know in the genre, She wrote an article for AALBC “It’s All About Love: Romance Readers Speak Out”. The article is over 20 years old and is just as informative today as it was when it was written. Gwen passed on May 14, 2022; she was 72. Biyi Bandele Biyi Bandele-Thomas (October 13, 1967 – August 7, 2022) was an award-winning novelist, playwright, photographer, and director. He was born in Nigeria and is the son of a veteran of the Burma campaign. The Independent named him one of Africa’s fifty greatest artists. Biyi’s directorial debut film, Half of a Yellow Sun – based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – was screened in the Special Presentation section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. I did not know Biyi personally. I was informed of his transition, which “Totally shocked the African writing community.” by Kadija Sesay. Kadija has been instrumental in helping me build out content on African writers, allowing me to share information about important writers from the continent like Biyi Bandele. The Following is Sponsored by Penguin Press Following in the footsteps of Dr. MLK Jr. and John Lewis, Senator Warnock is today’s leading voice in voting rights. As a pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, and the first Black senator from Georgia, Senator Warnock promises to lead us forward as he reflects on the ongoing toggle between the pain and promise of the American story. A rare voice in American politics, Senator Warnock will make you, too, feel like you can beat the odds. Read His Story ▶ Dear Troy, Reflecting on the individuals highlighted in this newsletter, I can’t help but be moved by the impact they have on Black books. However, none of these people attained their accomplished by themselves, and AALBC would not be where it is without them. “It takes a village…” I can never over-emphasize how important your support is to AALBC.com. Your paid subscriptions, book purchases, suggestions, engagement on the site, social sharing, advertisements, and feedback help support AALBC’s mission of celebrating Black culture through books. Peace and Love, Troy Johnson Founder & Webmaster, AALBC.com Consider sponsoring our eNewsletter or a dedicated email. ★ AALBC.com eNewsletter – August 16, 2022 - Issue #365

I have never witness Jim Crow segregation. I grew up in the north and was too young to remember it. My youth was of the 60's and 70's was, I suspect, as segregated the Jim Crow south. In fact many southerners said northern racism was worse, because in the south the racists make it clear. Northerners hide it.

@frankster now he was not threatening anyone's banning someone like that is a no-brainer. He was however threatening the forum in ways that I did not appreciate until I saw the impact of his posts. I did not ban Greg for their "anti-black crap." If you want to argue something anti-Black fine, but Greg was trying to pollute the forum with anti-Black crap giving it the appearance of being an anti-Black forum which was where I ultimately drew the line. @Michel Montvert don't worry about cluttering the forum. Greg's efforts took time and effort to achieve the effect. Thanks for sharing the links to the forums I hope you can get others to participate and that they do the same and so on...

This is textbook projection.

Yeah Faces At The Bottom Of The Well: The Permanence Of Racism by Derrick Bell was an AALBC bestseller, but it is an old book and out of print, as far as I can tell. Maybe some day down the road, AALBC will sell used books.