Troy

Hi Courtney, tanks for sharing information about your event here. I've added it to our calendar: https://aalbc.com/events/index.php?st=District+of+Columbia#East+of+the+River+Book+Festival I see you mentioned Instagram. I don't use Instagram, so I dug a little and see that there is a website for the festival. I would encourage you to always mention your website.

Stumbled across this page looking for content to create a page for ole' Chrissy boy and this was the first thing that came up. I published a review he wrote, and am about to migrate it to the new format which includes a webpage for the reviewer. So now I'm hunting for a little information on him. Chris was one of the few "Cyniquian Level" posters, an honor earned on the old forum. It is too bad I had to abandon the old software (too prone to spammers), we lost a bunch of good posters in the transaction. I don't even know enough about him to complete a profile page.

I completely agree with what you just wrote Cynique. All I'm trying to do is add to what you and Chris are saying: as a Black person you can do all the right things and still fail. We fail with abilities and actions that result in success for white folks. Most of it has to do with support structures white folks have in place that we are lacking. You see, if we keep saying all you have to do is work hard and make the right decisions to succeed, you don;t do anything about all of the roadblocks that hamper the success of so many others. This is the mentality of many Black republicans who look at their own success and say, "well if I did so can you." Sure some folks escape, but we can't forget about the many others who never will--due to no fault of their own. Yes work hard, avoid bad decisions, pray, keep your fingers crossed, and do all you can to improve your chances to succeed. But we must also be clear; there is still a battle to fight. I think we have forgotten that, and the biggest consequence of this is our lack of solidarity. Folks like to say, "Black people are not a monolith." of course this is true, but we are treated by society as if we are, and must react as a monolith in order to enjoy the freedoms we deserve in this country. That monolith built universities, it build communities, it build newspapers that feed and nourished our community. Today we talk about our ability to reach others with stupid videos on Twitter, while the communities, universities and newspaper we built shutdown and struggle. It is sickening to think about really. A luta continua...

Cynique, with a TV in every room, a cell phone in every hand, and easy access to fast food, I'm sure Blacks (and everyone else) has more material wealth today, but how are Black doing today relative to White folks when you were younger? It would also be interesting for you to expand upon our spiritual losses I don't put so much faith in the individual being responsible for their own success, sometimes people are victims of the situation, a situation they have no control over. If you are a victim of a shitty school system and aggressive policing you are at a severe disadvantage. A poor education and a warrant can put a serious damper on career prospects. Besides I've seen too much talent get marginalized and wasted because they were not in the right "club." I've also seen people do well for themselves by being very sheisty. Negros don't get away with this, but white folks do all day long. The Wells Fargo scam is the latest example with the CEO being one of the highest bank Bank CEOs in the country... No, America is not a meritocracy.

Humm maybe I better research my Cuban history before I indulge you further on the timing off Soviet involvement in Cuba ;-) Speaking of Cuba I'm seriously considering hosting a literary excursion there next year, perhaps y'all can join me. I'll work out the details shortly. I wanna get there before the suits put a Starbucks and McDonalds on every corner. As far a Haiti, I'm reading a book now called the Black Jacobins; man those French slave owners make Los Pepes (from the Netflix series Narco) look like saints. Speaking about Kaepernick, I tuned into his first game to see what the hullabaloo was all about, and I agree 100% with what you wrote. If the twittersphere wasn't going ape-shit over this I would have thought he was showing more reverence for the flag than those simply standing around him--and I would not have thought anything else about it--pass me a beer. There were two other Black players (non-mulatto) on the team who held up their fists in a Black power salute, reminiscent of Tommie Smith and John Carlos in the '68 Olympics. No one mentioned them. i guess Kaepernick was selected and given the juice. Maybe they should stop singing the nation anthem at football games. If anything, it would give Kaepernick an opportunity to do something meaningful like walking off the field. Imagine if all the Black players walked off the field...now that would be something huh?

So @Pioneer1, if you had children you would not get them vaccinated? You believe vaccinations are a conspiracy to destroy Black people? Man, we need Black journalists now more than ever. If not for anything else to lay these rumors to rest (or prove them to be true). Conspiracy theories die hard even in the face of facts and truth. Recently I decided to focus on the dispelling the Willie Lynch Letter as a hoax. This was a hoax I pretty much thought was dead, but once I started promoting a book, Death of the Willie Lynch Speech: Exposing the Myth by Manu Ampim, which explained and proved the letter was a hoax. I was surprised by the number of people who reacted by saying it does not matter if the letter is a hoax, it is the "message" that is important. This reasoning nonsensical to me. But the reality is that issues likes these are completely emotional and reasoning does not apply. As result, we are stuck on stupid and make no progress--in fact we regress. I thought about removing the book, The Willie Lynch Letter And The Making Of A Slave, from my website because I was helping to promote the lie. Instead I thought it would be more impactful to post the following on the books page: "AALBC.com Note: Despite the popularity of this title on our website, the Willie Lynch Letter is a hoax" Despite the disclaimer, the Willie Lynch letter book outsold the book dispelling the letter over the past 30 days. Obviously conspiracy theories are not limited to Black folks. Even white people believe vaccines cause autism. There are communities where devastating diseases that were eradicated are now on the rise, because white folks are not getting their kids vaccinated. This puts us all in danger. But I understand why people don't trust the government. The government has largely proven itself to be untrustworthy. White folks believe the government is causing autism due to gross incompetence, negligence, and being owned by the pharmaceutical lobby. Black people feel it is genocide. These are all plausible given our government's behavior. We are so grossly misinformed, by the shallow, sensational, revenue-seeking, social-media-driven, news cycle, we are suspect to believe anything. Two days ago I got a social media update the Chinua Achebe recently died....

I think the Black community, was better off 75 years ago. America was far worse, but the Black community was superior. We had our own media, universities, and we worked together to make due with the limited resources and freedoms we enjoyed in this country. If the Black community was as tight as it was back then today we would be thriving. Insteading we kneel on the sidelines or tweet our outrage while waiting for someone else to make things better for us. But what do I know? I yield to the older folks in this regard. What I do know is that we should be doing MUCH better than we are currently.

Videos from the 2016 Brooklyn Book Festival

I just found this mini documentary on Heru:

I ran into poet, author, Heru Ptah at the Brooklyn Book festival on Sunday. Now Heru has been published by a major publisher, he has appeared on HBO's Def Jam, and he was book writer for the Broadway Musical Hot Feet. He has accomplished a lot. But he is still "grinding" like a self published author. Walking the fair hand selling books person to person. This is the way Heru was discovered, hand selling books on a NYC subway. He sold a book to the publishing director of MTV Books and got a "mid-5-figure" book deal. Some authors, after getting a book deal stop self promoting (assuming they ever promoted their own work at all). You can't stop--especially if you are Black. Heru approached me at the fair and I've created content to promote his work as a result. To be clear, selling books on a New York City subway is not for everyone. Even if one were inclined to do it, some might consider it too aggressive or intrusive a tactic to use. Whatever your technique, you have to actively promote you work even after you "make it."

The following video is Kellie Magnus, one of the organizers of the Kingston Book Festival. I'm planning or organizing a group trip to the festival this coming March. I just decided to do it and since this would be my first time organizing such an excursion and it is just 6 months away, I'm not entirely sure I can pull it off--but I'll try it really is a nice event :-)

This is why we need Black newspapers with real journalist. Given the number of Black men killed by white police officers under these conditions; the KKK is beginning to sound like a plausible explanation for these senseless killings. Journalists can also dispel these theories, or put them in perspective, so that we don't waste valuable time and energy on falsehoods. Obviously Tulsa has a history of destroying Black people...

You know Terry I've been at it almost 19 years and it feels like I'm just getting started. I have a lot more planned Do you know the writer and filmmaker, D. Amari Jackson? He is also in ATL and wrote a book called the Savion Sequence which uses Egyptian themes as well.

Congrats on the Pacific Book Award and the critical acclaim for your novel @Terry Coffey

Laini Mataka - One Powerful Poet! 0 As I was updating the website I came across this poet. Much of her poetry touches on issues we've been discussing lately.

Book Promotion Special Only $99 September 23 to December 21, 2016 Get Started Now! Your book will appear on the AALBC.com Homepage and the Book’s Main Page for the entire fall, the number of days shown on the counter below. Once you’ve processed payment, by clicking the red “Get Started Now!” button above, simply email us the URL of the page where you want us to send readers who click your book’s cover, and we'll handle the rest.

I think you are making my point Cuba was backed by the USSR. Toussaint had the back of Mulattos and the enslaved population (basically the entire populations) and you can read about how violent the cultural revolution in China was. All of these figures had "big guns." Big guns is what fuels change. It took a civil war to free the slaves. It took the freaking National Guard to desegregate schools (even though de facto segregation in schools persists to this day). There will be no Twitter fueled social change, Football players kneeling during the National Anthem will not change a thing either. The big guns for the 21st century will be our money. If we can have an influence through local politics why is there so much tragedy in Black communities?

Why Pioneer, why? Humm I dunno, maybe it was 300 hundred years of slavery, followed by 100 years of Jim Crow, followed by hyper-incarceration, shitty schools, poor services, and media fueled brainwashing of our people. What do you think? Things will have to get MUCH worse. It will have to touch, in a personal way, " the most intelligent minds in the Black community" that you talk about. Sure Dwayne Wade's cousin was gunned down in Chicago, but at the end of the day he is a highly paid entertainer--and this is not enough. Again it will have to get much, much worse... Cynique, Pioneer, the media, if they choose, can make grass growing compelling entertainment. Crafting stories of white suicide to attract eyeballs would be easy. They just choose not to do it because they care about their community. Black folks are obviously treated differently. This is why the loss of Black newspapers is so devastating. But as a people we are too brainwashed to understand why this even matters. We happily rely on Twitter for our news and information. Cynique, of course a lone woman might be intimidated by a strange white man on the street. But we never, ever hear white men complaining about Black women, crossing the street to avoid them. Yes Black folks live for white acceptance and white folks don't care about ours. So the notion of telling stories about intimidated Black women makes no sense to them. Do you see my point? Black people buy into the same media propagated stereotypes white people do. So Black people too are puzzled as to why shiftless negroes in Chicago insist in blowing each others brains out. The death of Black journalism, black businesses, black schools is the death of us. Cynique, you are being fair, reasonable, logical, and rational when you look at these issues, the media are not. So I think it is hard for you to see the inherent biases in how they report. Dealing with media bias is simple--stop consuming it and call it out for what it is. The power of the purse is one tool we have, but we never ever use it, because we don't know how.

Thanks again Cynique.

LOL yeah you are being choosy for something free, but don't worry about I'll post another graphic for you (for free) shortly Yes I've begun creating these images as enhancements for the Large Book Ad. If you go to any AALBC.com page (expect the discussion forums), you'll see those the large book cover ads on the right hand sde of the page (on the homepage they are in the center of the page). I have not announced it as a new feature yet.

@Cynique, I've figured out why your stories mean so much to me. You provide an intergenerational connection that helps complete to complete me as a person. I know I'm not a direct descendant, but the reality is that we are all related and therefore family. That plus our shared culture gives us (all of us) a spiritual connection that is important, but largely overlooked and not celebrated in the American culture. I'm sure this is why promoting our culture through books is so important to me as well. Thanks again. Troy p.s. the newly open AA Museum is a refreshing exception so you know I'm there :-)

Hi @Dr T I've recently begun creating images for author advertisements. Below is one I created for you using the image you supplied above. This was created in photoshop.

Can't argue with that